(Update 10/21/2009 2:12 PM: Despite being asked and answered on release day, looks like B&N are doing a 360 on their position with the wi-fi. It was announced during a press call today that the wi-fi will work anywhere you can connect)
Yikes! If I thought there was Kindle-bashing before a real competitor came out, I was so wrong. Kindle users are going to have to grow some thick skin. The nook™, Barnes & Noble’s new ereader is being touted on the blogs and Twitter as the savior of ereaders.
I like the looks of the device, as one tweet said, “looks like an iPhone and a Kindle had a baby” seems about right. The nook has an eInk screen similar to the Kindle, but also has a small LCD screen under it. This seems to be giving it an ‘ooo, shiny!’ quality to some, I would caution them to take a look at all the major players before buying. I’m including Sony even though they are a device seller, not bookseller, simply because they have been in the game for awhile. I’m starting to feel a little sorry for them though–they have a lot less to offer. The features are comparable to the Kindle with some improvements that prove B&N was checking the Kindle complaint boards to see what users wanted.
Something that I think is also worth mentioning is that currently the ebooks in the B&N store are more expensive than the ones in the Kindle store. There has been mention of B&N getting more competitive. Whether they do this by combining the physical book with the ebook, or by simply lowering their price point is unknown. If they manage to tie some physical book purchases w/ the ebooks, many many users may be tempted to jump the Kindle ship.
Things they got right
- Removable battery – Some Kindlers expressed concern over battery die-out in the future. The nook has a battery that you can replace
- Expandable Storage – the nook has internal memory and will accommodate an microSD card. I miss the SD card in my old Kindle 1 very much. When I finished a book, I just moved it over onto the card. That was such a nice feature.
- Wi-fi – This would have been a HUGE win, but their application of wi-fi just makes me laugh, unforturnately, the wi-fi is only usable inside the B&N store. What were they thinking?! Away from the store, you’ll have to use the ATT 3G network. (Edit: I orginally left off that a very nice feature of the wi-fi is that you can read an entire book free in-store. I’d like more detail on this, but as stated is an awesome feature)
- Personalized Screensavers – Very nice. You have to change the Kindle’s screensavers with a hack. A nicely put together hack, but a hack all the same
- File Types – The nook supports .epub and .PDF which is nice, but they left out text (.TXT) files. Also, there does not seem to be any convenient (albiet paid for) document conversion/emailing service that is available on the Kindle.
- PC Reading – Using the B&N reader, you can read your content on any device that it can be installed on. Currently, there are apps for iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, PC/Mac
nook Features
I was way more excited by the nook before I read the Tech Specs and watched their video. I am totally with them on the expandable storage, personal screensavers and replaceable battery. I am not sold on that extra screen, though. If you are only using your nook to read books, big whoop. If they open it up to developers as was hinted, then perhaps they’ll have applications available. But in that case, why not just get an iPod Touch, or Android phone instead?
Navigation – I have had a Kindle all the way back to the Kindle 1 and currently have almost 300 books, some on my Kindle 2, most in my Amazon Archives. If I’m going to have to scroll thru each cover when browsing for a re-read, I would go mad. For you iPhone users, imagine scrolling thru 300 apps–how many pages would that be?
Menu – The menu in the video seems a little too basic to me. Hopefully, there just wasn’t time to show book navigation via some sort of location or page number, although I did see a search feature. There is no mention of the ability to search within book, library, B&N Store or the web that the Kindle has.
Page Turns – Maybe it was me, but it looked like the page turn was odd and took way too long. The video on the ITworld site also seems to indicate that it takes a pretty hard push to activate the page turn.
Lending – I can see the same outcry (whether justified or not) that the Kindle generated with its TTS. I also noted the use of ‘most books’ when describing their Lending feature. Direct quote “You can lend many of your eBooks one time for a maximum of 14 days”. Does ‘one time’ mean you can only lend a book once and for a maximum of 14 days and not ‘renew’ the lend? In any case, like TTS, I’m ready for stingy Random House to turn off this feature.
Things they missed
AudioBooks – They are only mentioned in passing and the CS rep I talked with was totally confused on it which makes me wonder if their menu can tell the difference between music and an audiobook.
Folders/Tags – How they left this out, I do not know. I’m hoping the videos and specs just didn’t mention it, and its included, but content management is one of the biggest complaints and first forum questions users ask about.
Web Browser – Why go thru the trouble of putting a LCD screen on the thing if you can’t even get to the web? That was just mean.
Text-to-Speech – Adding it would not have meant copying the Kindle, it’s a useful feature and couldn’t have hurt.
Line Spacing - I’m not sure about this one, but it looked like you could only increase the font, not the line spacing. The ability to do both is in the Kindle and if you haven’t tried it, you’ll be surprised at how much easier on the eyes it is reading after increasing the line spacing.
A couple of deceptions
When I checked out the B&N comparison chart between the Kindle and the nook, a couple of things irritated me. They are touting the wi-fi/free wi-fi in B&N stores. According to their specs, that’s the only place it can be used. Yawn. The old ‘more than a million titles available’ trope indicating that they’re not available on the Kindle – bleh. I’m from Missouri – show me. If they are talking about all those Google free books, you can’t get to them on the device, you need a pc to do that. Since that’s the case, any ereader that has a pc to device connection can get them. (See article here).
All in all, I’ll be checking out the nook when they get the displays up in the stores, but for now, I don’t think I’m jumping ship. My experience on the Kindle 1 taught me better than to jump on the 1st generation device–especially when B&N isn’t really giving me anything that really compels.
