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Read your eBooks the way they were formatted with this lightweight professional eBook reader

Read your eBooks the way they were formatted with this lightweight professional eBook reader

Vote: (22 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Turnipsoft

Works under: Windows

Vote:

Program license

(22 votes)

Free

Developer

Turnipsoft

Works under:

Windows

Freda is a software application that allows users to read e-books and quite a few other document formats on personal computing devices running Windows. The current version of Freda can be downloaded and installed for free on all versions of Windows starting with Windows 8; legacy versions are also available for Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, and even WinCE, thus giving owners of older Windows smartphones and PDAs a chance to give their discontinued devices a second life by turning them into e-book readers.

Although this e-book reader is offered for free, its development team relies on advertising revenue, but this is not an overly intrusive feature. Once installed, the Freda bookshelf will open with six classic titles plus a help guide that lets start reading right away. In terms of user interface, Freda is as pretty as it comes; the layout design follows the Windows Metro UI look, and the operation is reminiscent of Windows 10. Anyone who has used Windows from version 8 until the most recent Windows 10 update will be find Freda intuitive and easy to use.

The document and e-book formats supported by Freda include e-Pub, .txt, HTML, MOBI, and FB2. It is important to note that Freda does not support files created with the Digital Rights Management protocol, which means that many Amazon Kindle e-books will not open properly. Speaking of Kindle, one thing that really stands out about Freda is that the user interface is superior to Amazon's flagship reader. Whether you are reading on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer, the Freda experience will be smooth and consistent.

Virtually all aspects of e-book reading can be customized on Freda. The fonts, colors, paragraph formats, and backgrounds can be easily changed to your preference. As for page and chapter navigation, Freda is highly responsive to keyboard, mouse, and touch commands. Researchers will find it easy to annotate, highlight, and bookmark sections or pages.

Since Freda is available for free, it makes perfect sense that its development team has been thoughtful enough to integrate connectivity to Project Gutenberg, Smashwords, and Feedbooks. These platforms offer thousands of DRM-free books you can download right into your Freda reader. You can also connect Freda to your OneDrive and DropBox cloud storage accounts in case you are receiving e-books therein. Freda will also connect to Calibre libraries, but most users end up making Freda their default library.

E-book synchronization is automatic between Freda instances running on Windows devices, but this does not work as well on Android smartphones and tablets. One very nice touch of Freda is that it has incorporated a few features to help dyslexic readers make the most of their experience, and this includes the OpenDyslexic font. Freda also includes a "read aloud" feature for visually impaired users.

If you make Freda your default e-book reader, and you should, you will be able to open supported files from your web browser or email messages; this is very useful if you belong to a reading club or an online forum that shares e-books. About the only things missing from Freda would be DRM support and the ability to read the CBR or CBZ formats for comic books.

Freda Pros

  • Completely free to download and install.
  • Gorgeous user interface.
  • Lots of useful features.

Freda Cons

  • No DRM support.
  • Does not read comic books.