I've been using Calibre since I bought a Kindle and quite frankly for what it does there is not much better available. However there are a couple of things that it doesn't do too well. I am talking about 95% brilliant and 5% could be better to give you some idea of scale of my comments.

Libraries
It doesn't manage large libraries at all well, I'm talking about 1000+ books (I'm on i7 with 8GB) and I am not sure it was ever intended to cope with libraries that big in the first place. I think the storage needs to be ported to a proper database structure instead of the folder method that's being used now.

Kindle Collections
Kindle Collections is an extension for Calibre and I find it can be hit and miss at times. I use it to organise my collections but when I restart the Kindle it is seldom the way I organised it.

Small change in return for what it does do well like manage metadata, covers and the downloading of news is worth it just for that alone. I have made donations for both Calibre and Kindle Collections and I would urge anyone using it regularly to the same.

Kindlean
I have just purchased Kindlean which does nothing but manage Kindle collections and it is beautiful, functional and efficient.

Alfa Ebooks Manager
I've been looking at this for managing my library. It is the best I have seen so far. The free version really doesn't do much but point out what the paid version would do. The full version is not cheap ($40) but if it did what it says it does it is probably worth it. The only problem I have struck is that on one of my laptops (both Win7 64Bit) it throws .Net errors when it tries to start then fails completely. Spending that much money on a product that won't even start makes me nervous even though the other laptop runs it perfectly.

To sum up I think I need three applications because I haven't found one application that does everything well.

• Calibre to manage what goes from my library to my Kindle
• Kindlean to manage the collections on the Kindle
• An Ebook Library manager as yet undecided.

Thanks for the article on Calibre :-)

For a few years I ran a photographic gallery and had to put up with gadget geeks going an about how good the Nikon (insert your number here) was compared to the whatever. In extreme cases I would walk them to the walls and point to a photo and ask "what camera was this image taken with". They would then shut the fuck up.

It's about what you do with it or what it does to the world.

Guns are a good example, it is the gun? or the bullet? or what happens when you point it at your head and pull the trigger?