MDBG Chinese Reader

Bummer, it doesn't support Mac :(  Looks like a great tool.

Yeh :( No mac/linux support yet.. but I'm sure they'll get around to it eventually.

Yeah, I hope so.  It seems that they're aware of the issue, and intend to get to it later: "Sorry, native Mac OS X and Linux are not currently available."  I'm hoping that they make it Ubuntu-centric so it installs nicely and is fully integrated.

I have to say, I'd gladly fork over $59 for this program.  That's beyond worth it, considering how useful it would be and how much effort it would take to implement by oneself.

light,

Thanks heaps for the tip on the "Chinese Pera-kun" plugin.I've just downloaded it and given it a burl.Fantastic ! 谢谢

I've done a little mini review of this program over on my blog. I've included a video of it in action with my review, which I will put below for convenience. Basically, MDBG Chinese Reader rocks the socks off Pera-kun.. pity that it is a little pricey. If it was like.. $39USD, it would be a lot more in-line with most software prices and would be less of a decision to make whether or not to buy it... especially in the current global financial climate..

Daily Light Blog

guys, why not try the free software by Google and a Chinese local translation software designer. it's very popular.

http://download.iciba.com/pwl/powerwordlite.25269.3008.exe

I paid for this expensive software two years ago and have been trying to make my money's worth ever since without success ($79 standard edition, incredible that they don't provide dictionary tweaking and Google-translate in this standard version - such simple functionality - and instead ask you to purchase for almost double that amount a "pro version").
I purchased MDGB Reader mainly because it promised to be the only popup reader that could read Chinese characters within my Windows install, pdf, word docs and other programs and because their free version seemed promising but clearly not meant for regular use. I wanted to be able to use Windows in Chinese, since at my company in Beijing most computers have a Chinese version of Windows OS installed. Unfortunately, those promises are misleading and simply untrue:
On the one hand I have consistently found myself having to type into my smart-phone all of the Windows messages and pop-ups because MDGB Reader is extremely capricious and stops working each and every time, either translates only the first character or word, or it simply freezes altogether (I confess having to do this tedious typing-exercise has actually helped me a lot in improving my Chinese writing, but has almost got me fired due to delays with my work)...

... On the other hand, with document reading, I have found myself always having to resort to copy-pasting entire texts into a Firefox window, then using the beautifully reliable, fast, and intuitive Perapera Chinese pop-up plug-in for firefox instead of the bulkily slow and tedious MDGB reader (try Perapera’s word-list and paragraph navigation shortcuts). Installing Firefox only in order to be able to use Perapera is ten times a smarter move than paying for and installing the extremely irritating MDGB reader and infinite times cheaper. Also the promising "offline pronunciation feature" of MDGB Reader is a scam, too slow, too unreliable. I've consistently found myself moving away from trying to work with that to simply paying for a 3G internet connection dongle, then using google-translate's “listen” feature (3G connection yearly subscription in China still cheaper than paying for the standard version of MDGB Reader). In terms of customer support and software development, these MDGB people are insane: software can only be used in one installation (means you cannot install on two computers but also means if you have two Windows bootable partitions in the same computer forget using it on both); in more than three years they still have not developed a Mac version; they still have not added paragraph navigation, startup and word-list shortcuts; and instead they have consistently tried to come up with new manipulative contraptions to charge ever more money (e.g. "pro-version" and "monthly subscriptions") and to lure new victims into their scam. I actually wrote them a similar message after my first attempts complaining about this serious shortcomings (in more polite terms, I admit) and I didn’t even receive a reply.In conclusion: too expensive, very unstable software, slow in startup, slow in action, unpredictable; terrible customer service, terrible track-record, unintuitive site and manuals; it lacks proper navigation shortcuts and it is as intuitive as using a traditional paper dictionary. MDBG Reader is a lot of corporate blabla and has shown no real interest in having its customers improve their Chinese. Your money is very likely being used to pay for ever more sophisticated advertising and promotion and for pumping up their already flashy, yet labyrinthic website in order to lure others instead of on improving their useless software. Conversely it is surprising to see that a single man (behind Perapera), who clearly really loves language teaching and learning, is offering a simple plug-in for nothing (at most he asks for a 5$ contribution) and a website full of very useful tips to anyone learning Chinese, Japanese and Korean.I suggest that you forget about this MDGB Reader and instead contribute a 10th of what you'd be giving these scammers to the Perapera people and others that really have useful tools which will really help you in the long-term with your Chinese learning. Oh, and for the sake of full-disclosure, I have NO CONNECTION whatsoever to the Perapera people apart from having contributed 79$ to their project (judging from their track record, hopefully if we all contribute a bit, we will get a proper document reader in some time, instead of a useless one).