I actually really don’t like FeedDemon. They’ve clearly tried to act like Google Reader in a lot of ways (or maybe Reader decided to be like them when they started) but Google does everything much better. Which annoys me.

I was really look forwards to venturing out beyond Google’s services and trying others but Google’s monopoly on awesome is held really tightly for some reason.

I didn’t like FeedDemon because:

• It doesn’t mark items as read after I’ve been looked at the item. After the item has been selected it should immediately become read, keeping an item as unread isn’t the default action that I’d want.
• Control + D to go to the next unread item. I’m sure you can change that, but by default that’s a dumb idea. What’s wrong with J (which works in some cases, but not others)? I typical action such as going to the next item shouldn’t require a combination key press. I know this sounds lazy, but I have to move my hand to press control, and that annoys me.
• It seems to be using Internet Explorer in the reading pane. Not so much of a big deal, but wha’?

I really do like the syncing with Google though. I know I wanted to get away from Google to start with, but it’s more about working in the cloud than fanboyism. I like all my stuff being synced. My laptop should really just be  a throw away device.

I also liked the monospaced, large reading area though. But for now I’ll just give Reader a quick CSS hack to do that.