A general problem with desktop readers is that they don't really sync with each other, unless there is also a back-end service associated with them. (or they support many services).

My news reader is my go-to "I have a few minutes" thing, so I use it equally from desktop/laptop, phone, iPad and so on. I don't want to spend any effort clearing each source of articles I've read on another.

I agree, normally I just use my Desktop, but it's nice to have sync across devices and OS.

With Google Reader you could have that sync between RSS Readers because you were using Reader as backend, but now?

Well, as we wrote, we explictly target web based readers only!

your headline does not say that

That's why you had to RTFA.

lightread relied on Google Reader...

Oh damn, I hope they change the backend.