Comments on: Using Calibre for E-Book Management, Chapter 4: Calibre Content Server

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:13:56 +0000

Thanks, everyone for your insights into Calibre Companion. Content server meets all my needs right now, so I’ll stick with it for the moment.

By: Ana

Ana — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:59:21 +0000

There’s another advantage to using Calibre Companion. I use the Send to device feature to adjust some metadata in the book I’m sending, like tags, series, description… If you just download the book from the content server, the metadata isn’t adjusted. I use Mantano Reader, and I like its hability to read this data from my epub files, my library is automatically organised by tag or series, and I can read the description of a book I read some time ago and remember what it was about.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:52:43 +0000

I should have added that using Calibre Companion doesn’t buy you anything if you are running Calibre on a new Windows PC and you can connect the Nexus 7 to Calibre using a cable. In that case Calibre behaves the same whether you connect the device to it by a cable or wirelessly using Calibre Companion. But if you are running Calibre Companion on a Mac or an older PC that can’t connect to Calibre via a cable, then the Calibre companion approach is very useful.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:41:02 +0000

Juli: Yes I’ve used the content server as well as the Calibre Companion. Both work well and both have advantages and disadvantages. The content server lets you see the whole Calibre database on your device, which is nice although if you have a lot of books in can be slow and you can have to keep hitting the “Next” button to advance to the next group of books. Using this approach you are using the device to choose the books to download.

With Calibre Companion, you are instead using Calibre on your computer to download the books onto your device. So you get all the power of searching and sorting in Calibre to show you just the books that meet your search criteria. For example, if you wanted to load all the books by Dickens (or Victorian Melodramas in ePub format assuming you had a tag for Victorian Melodrama) into your Nexus 7, it would be much easier to use the Calibre Companion approach. You could tell Calibre to search for books by Dickens, then select all those books, then hit the send to device button and all the books would show up on your Nexus 7.

The bottom line is that both are approaches are effective if you’re just browsing your Calibre database looking for a book to download to your device. If you wish to use the search power of Calibre to locate books that meet specific criteria to download, then Calibre Companion is a lot faster and easier.

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:10:33 +0000

@Harvey, have you used the browser-based content server at all? If so, is there any compelling reason to use Calibre Companion instead? I also have a Nexus 7.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:06:05 +0000

Juli:
I use Calibre Companion all the time on my Nexus 7 since that device uses new Microsoft technology to connect via cable to your computer and Macs don’t support this technology. So I can’t connect the Nexus 7 to Calibre via a cable. Instead I connect using “Start wireless connect” in Calibre and the Calibre Companion Android app on my Nexus 7. The result is that Calibre behaves just like you described in your previous post on connecting devices using a cable. Calibre even has a column on the left (labeled “On device”) that shows check marks for the books that are already on the device .

On the device Calibre Companion shows the books already on the device. If you want to add a book to the device from Calibre, then click (in Calibre) on “Send to device” just as you described when there is a cable connection.

You can add or remove books on the device right from Calibre, just as if the device was physically connected. If you tap on a book in the device’s Calibre Companion app, you can view the complete set of metadata. On an Android device, the downloaded books are put in a folder called “Calibre” where an eReading App can access them.

Harvey

By: Steph B

Steph B — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:51:49 +0000

This is a cool feature of Calibre. It’s also the only way I’ve found of linking my Kobo Touch to my old MacBook, as the Kobo does not like OS X v10.4 (Tiger) – even ‘drag and drop’ does not work.