Palm Reader vs. iSilo (and. Photo Suite)

[majormadmax]

Howdy gang!

Been having fun with my new m130, but I have a question. I used to run iSilo Free on my old m100 (w/8MB upgrade), but couldn't use it on my new Palm as it had no capability to access the expansion port. So I downloaded the demo verison of iSilo, which I like but it requires a license after 30 days, which costs $17.50.

Here's my problem, my Palm came with a free copy of Palm Reader, which should read any .PRC, .PDB, .PQA, .PNC, or
.SCR file extensions that I have on my Palm, but it doesn't. I know I have them as iSilo sees them, but Palm Reader doesn't. Do these two programs conflict somehow? Which is better? (I know which is cheaper!) Do I have to delete iSilo and reload all the ebooks I have, or do I just have to delete iSilo (if that's what I end up keeping)?

By the way, I decided I liked PhotoSuite over SplashPhoto, although it takes forever to load my pictures from my SD card (1 or 2 minutes).

Cheers! M2

[m130]

If you can handle the wait, I agree that Photosuite is nicer and cheaper :)

To speed things up, I installed this from palm. It says that it is not necessary for the m130, but it helped me and some other a lot with speed on the expansion card.

http://www.palm.com/support/downloads/fatfs.html

As far as iSilo, I am not sure about palm reader. It might need to be in a specific folder on the card like /launcher/product or something like that. I do like iSilo, but the price doesn't help.

[majormadmax]

m130

I appreciate the tip, I downloaded the .ZIP file and put the program on my m130, but it doesn't seem to do too much to speed it up. Maybe a little...but it was worth a try regardless. Perhaps this is the difference v4.0 and v4.1...

Cheers! M2

[m130]

Maybe, but I am glad that the little bit helped ;)

With Splash Photo, it did make a big difference.

[Telyx]

Put iSilo free back in there and install MSMount. Then look in the Prefs app and select MSMount, write the path (on the card) where you keep your iSilo documents, and tap Enable.

Go back into iSilo free and you should see all of your iSilo and Palm Doc-format e-books.

[tuffguy]

I have not seen a freeware version of iSilo. Can someone point me in the right direction? Am I understanding correctly that this will read a greater variety of e-books than PalmReader does? I have downloaded tons of e-books, but most of them can't be read by PalmReader. Very frustrating.

[Telyx]

If you don't register iSilo 3.25 after the trial period, it will still work but (of course) some functions will be crippled. I think expansion card support and bookmarks are the main things you'll lose.

If I remember right, PalmReader will read PalmReader and PalmDoc (AportisDoc, not Microsoft .doc format) documents. iSilo will read PalmDoc, iSilo, and maybe PalmReader docs. I paid for iSilo and am very happy with it.

[paravantis]

Even the free version of PalmReader supports memory cards AS LONG AS ebooks reside in the /PALM/Books directory of the memory card. To be able to copy ebooks into this specific subdirectory, I suggest installing McFile (shareware).

FATFS.prc does NOT need to be installed for the m130 (it is built into the OS of the m130). In fact, if you do install it, you will not be able to uninstall it unless you do a hard reset.

[majormadmax]

I've found the program Filez works as well for moving files around on the SD card. Matter of fact, using Filez I see I now have two FATFS.PRC files, one of which is ROM-based and cannot be moved or deleted. I am also unable to delete the second one. There goes 51K of space wasted!

Cheers! M2