Now, another great product in the hands of a huge company, to be watered down, "fixed", DRM'ed, on and on. Stanza will never be the same.

I meant a desktop app to transfer/manage my library on to the iPhone. eReader does not have this, you must manage the library (purchased as well as personal content) through the eReader website.

I was looking for a local way to get my books onto my iPhone. Stanza did do this flawlessly, but the hash it made of my books outweighed this functionality.

You're missing the point. Yes, I expect it to stay where it is when I lock it in landscape. And it does. The problem exists when I also expect to STILL be locked in landscape the next time I launch the app. Stanza absolutely will not do that.

Tap on Stanza while holding the phone upright and your book would be portrait. And it would be LOCKED at portrait. You would either have to unlock the orientation rotate to landscape and re-lock, or exit and launch the app holding the phone on its side.

Yes, that is the expected behavior for a rotation Lock. They got it right.

Pisses me off when I lay roll onto my side in the hammock on a lazy summer read only to have the damn page flip as well.

With Stanza & eReader setting a higher user experience, Amazon would strive for improvements.

We can hope.

I installed Stanza. Both iPhone and desktop, and when it comes to eReader content, eReader app kicks Stanza's puny little butt. Stanza would NOT remember orientation settings between sessions. Oh sure, I could lock it at landscape and it would stay there, but exit and re-enter the app, and it would revert to whatever orientation the phone was in when you opened it. Tap on Stanza while holding the phone upright and your book would be portrait. And it would be LOCKED at portrait. You would either have to unlock the orientation rotate to landscape and re-lock, or exit and launch the app holding the phone on its side.

I'm not even going in to what it did to my formatting and line breaks in the book itself.

Use left justify- much more readable!

Seconded!

One thing that really bugged me about the Kindle app is that some books have full-justified text, which is a readabilty and aesthetic disaster with such short line lengths. I read that Amazon lets publishers specify what justification to use- big mistake. I sure hope Stanza doesn't get shackled to dumb commercial decisions like that.

What makes you so sure that access to Amazon via Stanza won't get lockouts as well?

And if that could happen, why is this a good move?

( http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44350&highlight=amazon+banning )

Clearly a great move for amazon.

I prefer to have access to Amazon thru Stanza without the lock outs that some Amazon users have experienced.

Yay for progress.

I would rather have Google own Stanza than Amazon.

In fact I was just fine with Lexcycle owning it.

I held off, because I wanted to evaluate Kindle. Having done so, I have to say that Stanza is head and shoulders above the Kindle app in almost every way.

Stanza is just easier to use in all respects. The interface is brilliantly simple to use - tap right side to page forward, tap left side to page back. Tap center for menu. Instant brightness adjustment by sliding finger up and down. Zoom via the normal methods.

Kindle requires a swipe to page forward (harder to do one handed), and you have to leave the app to change brightness.

Stanza goes out of its way to put free material into your hands, but also allows access to paid ebooks from a variety of sources. (15 different sources). You can add sources, such as any website hosting ebooks in a variety of formats.

Kindle lets you get your books from Amazon. End of story. And Amazon does not lift a finger to provide free content. (You can find it, but its hard).

With Stanza you can buy books right in Stanza, With Kindle you have to wander around the wasteland of Amazon searching for Kindle books in Safari, until you get sick of it and resort to your desktop to buy a book. Its pathetic.

Stanza has a desktop application as well, and with it you can share books between the phone and the computer via Bonjour. (At last a use for that miserable Bonjour!!!). The windows version pretty much sucks, the Mac version may be better.). It will read a variety of document formats from your hard drive and make them down loadable to the iphone over your wifi. Awesome.

No clue how you might share with your desktop with Kindle.

The complete built in Dictionary of Stanza lets you look up any word in the text by tapping it, and holding. No such feature in Kindle.

I will be REALLY PISSED if Amazon horks over Stanza or shuts it down in favor of their miserable iPhone Kindle version.

Stanza is a far better app and a joy to read. It has almost all of Gutenberg online and instantly available, and the interface is brilliant.

They actually have a desktop client that eReader lacks! Heck, I might switch now!