Read PDFs with Ease Using GoodReader for IPad

If you play 4th edition D&D, you are probably already aware of the cool resources that are available via the D&D Insider program such as the access to Dragon and Dungeon magazines and the ability to download them to your device as .PDF files, or the tools that are available to you like the compendium that makes finding the skinny on that obscure item or monster incredibly easy.

The problem has been that you needed to have your desktop, laptop, or net book available in order to use these resources during a game session. But what if you wanted to use your iPad? You could use the native Safari browser for the tools on the Insider website, but if you wanted to view your issues of Dragon or Dungeon magazine you couldn't open them up in iBooks because it only accepts documents that are rendered in the .epub format. .Epub is a fine open standard that works great with the public domain ebooks found on Project Guttenberg or in the iTunes and Kindle bookstores, but it is not a format that is often used in most office environments, or even among the geeks in most gaming groups. After a bit of searching around, I found a solution to this problem in the form of GoodReader, a very cheap $.99 app on the iTunes app store that allows you to export .PDF files and view them on your iPad. The cool thing about this app is that you can preserve the style and design decisions that you made about your document, and most of the word processing programs such as OpenOffice already include PDF creation tools. Plus GoodReader is also available for your iPhone as well, so you can migrate documents between your desktop, iPhone, and iPad. Additionally GoodReader can handle .txt, Word (doc), Excel (xls), Powerpoint, HTML, Safari, all the video and audio files supported by the iPhone OS, and graphic files in all of the major extensions such as jpg,bmp, png, etc...

I was concerned that GoodReader might only be able to handle documents of a smaller page length, so I experimented by making my novel into a PDF, which resulted in a 590 page document. GoodReader handled the length of my document no problem, which makes me confident that it can handle yours with ease. I also really like the features that allow you to manage your files either through your USB connection when you sync your device, or alternately. You have the option to send and receive files wirelessly without entering your email with the app, although the process to do so is a bit more complicated than the ease of simply syncing your device via USB.

GoodReader seems like a nice alternative for those who want to read PDF-based ebooks and other texts on their iPhone or iPad and don't quite need to convert them to epub books. Plus, the price for all of this flexibility is very competitive.