Three readers, one week: today and tomorrow I’ll be featuring reviews of the new Sony Touch, the Kindle 3, and the Nook – the latter by guest reviewer Shannon Stacey. I personally didn’t like the Nook. It was bottom heavy. It’s interface was clunky, poorly responsive, and the LCD at the bottom was hugely annoying.I got the fail flower all the time. I didn’t think it was comfortable. I liked the Kindle better.
But that’s my opinion and I know many, many people who adore their Nooks (HOLY GOATS WHO CAME UP WITH THAT NAME?!) (I promise that’s the last time I’ll mention it) (Ha. I liked. NOOK?! REALLY?! It goes so well with
PubIc
I mean PubIt). So I wanted to allow those who really enjoy their Nooks (*cringe*) to have a chance to speak up about what they like.
I have long maintained that there is no one perfect reader, and much like cell phone advertisements, this isn’t the goddam Highlander where There Can Only Be One. There doesn’t have to be One Digital Reader To Rule Them All And Bind Them To Higher Prices For Books. Different digital readers work for different people, and I know that Shannon Stacey has an interesting story about buying the BN Nook. Thank you, Shannon!
The Barnes & Noble nook was an impulse buy for me. It was a frigid February day, my husband was away snowmobiling and I had money burning a hole in my pocket. Since nothing short of a “free doughnut with every iTunes gift card” sale was going to get me out into the cold, I did a little online shopping.
I had two tabs open on my browser—-one for the nook and one for the Kindle—-and I must have flipped back and forth between those two tabs for an hour. I even made a list of the last ten books I’d bought and compared the prices (pre-agency), but they were close enough to be a non-issue. The nook had the ability to tolerate the dreaded Adobe Digital Editions which, for me, meant books bought directly from eHarlequin and library books, but it was a new product for them and there were rumors of bugs. A lot of bugs. Like a hotel room in New York City kind of bugs. The Kindle had history, stability and ease of use going for it, but no ePub-ability.
In the end, I ordered the nook. Why? Because it was prettier and had rounded edges. Shallow much? Sure. But a Sony 505 had already tried and failed to lure me away from reading on my iPod Touch, and it failed because of its cold, hard metal edges.
I loved the nook…for a while. It felt wonderful in the hand. A little on the heavy side, but the rounded edges and the slightly rubberized backing were a pleasure to hold. The screen is beautiful, the text crisp and I got used to the refresh faster than I anticipated.
On the surface we looked like a perfectly happy couple, but resentment was festering. Perhaps I didn’t pay enough attention to the fine print but one of the important features for me—-syncing between devices, which meant reading on both the nook and the iPod Touch—-was actually “coming soon”. It hasn’t come yet. And there actually two folders on the device, one for Barnes & Noble purchases and one for “sideloaded” books, and none of the gimmicky features like the cover flow and the “coming soon” syncing apply to the sideloaded documents. Since about 95% of the books I read on the nook were sideloaded, those cool features were lost to me.
After a while I found myself “accidentally” buying books for my iPod Touch and returning to it again and again until, eventually, I stopped pretending I was using the nook. It wasn’t really the nook’s fault. I carry a very small purse and no purse at all during winter coat with pockets season, so I never had the nook with me on the go. I had my Touch, though. And I read in bad lighting a lot more often than I read in direct sunlight, which meant I needed a light for the nook, which meant I needed a cover. In the end it was too heavy and bulky for me.
In June, I loaded a book my husband wanted to read onto the nook and handed it to him. My plan was to get him to use it so I could stop feeling guilt about the $270 I flushed down the digital drain. He’s never been much of a reader and he’s even less of a “techie” type person—-let’s just say I still type out and send email for him—-but he was willing to give it a shot.
In the four months since I first handed him the nook, my husband has read more books than he’s read in the last…five years? He keeps bringing it to me and telling me it’s out of books. (With the two different book folders and the airplane mode and less than ideal book-browsing conditions via the device, I’m still the “manager”. I grab books on the Mac and send them over.)
I know from watching him with it what a part of the appeal is. He’s a master electrician and he’s got big, callused working man’s hands so he’s not comfortable with fragile electronics. But the nook’s pretty solid and, wrapped in the Executive cover from M-Edge folded back on itself (which I found too bulky), it feels right in his hands. He’s not afraid to grip it.
But what about the device turned my husband from an occasional reader—-the new Reacher or Davenport books mostly—-into a reader so voracious I’m, for the first time, on the short end of the “shut up, I’m trying to read” stick? I don’t know and he’s not a man of many words. I’ve been poking at him, trying to get him to articulate what he likes about it and he said:
“How the hell should I know? It’s like sex—-it’s either good or it’s bad and men don’t really care why. Now leave me the hell alone. I’m reading.”
But under duress (as in, I swore if he didn’t help me, I wouldn’t put any more books on the nook), he came up with a few things. He thinks it’s light. Besides the fact he has big, tough hands and I have girly hands, I think the disparity in our perception of its weight could also be due to the fact that, pre-digital, I read mostly mass market paperbacks (and a lot of those were shorter category romances) while he reads mostly hardcover thrillers. Even with the case and light, he says the nook’s lighter than a hardcover.
He likes the adjustable font. The one he uses is just a slightly larger than a standard print book’s, but it makes a difference. He also likes the fact there’s neither a bookmark to lose nor pages to crease when he falls asleep reading in his chair. When he goes to sleep, so does the nook. He also says the light (the M-Edge e-Luminator2) doesn’t glare on the e-ink screen like it does off paper or need to be fiddled with when reading two side-by-side pages in a print book..
So to recap, the nook wasn’t a big hit for me, but it wasn’t really the nook’s fault. I thought the grass would be greener on the e-ink side of the fence, but I couldn’t give up my iPod Touch habit. For my husband, however, the nook was nothing short of revolutionary.
I’m not the most tech-savvy woman on the planet—-hell, probably not even on my block—-but I’d be happy to answer any questions about the nook. Except why they didn’t capitalize the name of their product. That I don’t know.
The Nook is available from Barnes & Noble.com for $149 with WiFi and without 3G wireless, and $199 with both 3G and Wifi. You can see the devices at BN stores, or at Best Buy.
Do you have a Nook? Do you like it? What caused you to choose that reading device over the others? Nook fans, and Nook-curious (I can’t take this name any more, I swear), here’s your opportunity: let’s talk Nook.
I bought the Nook primarily because I had already purchased so many books for my iPhone and wanted to send them over (the backlight was killing me on the iPhone.) I read on it a lot, but sideloading is a pain. I like the ease of buying directly from bn.com, where my account is on file. BUT Barnes and Noble takes forever to put books up. The September Carina books JUST were listed this weekend. Kindle has better selection, sadly.
My husband bought one on pre-sale, and we bought one for my mom for Christmas last year. He bought me one for Valentine’s Day this year, when I had gathered up half a dozen print books off the shelf at B&N that he was planning buying electronically.
We’d debated Kindle’s. But, we don’t have WhisperNet coverage, and Sprint has no plans to bring it to where we live or to where my mom lives. If you don’t have coverage, a Kindle becomes much more difficult to use (so says a friend who has one that now gathers dust, having been tossed aside for her iPad).
My other objection to the Kindle was being tied to Amazon. I use them for a lot of things, but they have kind of become like Walmart: a necessary evil. If I could get an e-reader that didn’t tie me to them, so much the better.
We looked at the Sony models, but I didn’t like the way they felt in my hands. They just didn’t fit very well.
We really like having both Nook’s connected to a single account. It means that the genre reading we share (mostly fantasy & sci-fi) doesn’t have to be purchased multiple times. On the flip side, though, is that he’s constantly complaining about my romance & mysteries filling up his reading list, while I scroll by pages of stuff that has no interest to me.
I had the buttons crack on mine the first night I had it. The customer service rep I talked to was able to quite cheerfully talk me through the exchange process, and I had a replacement within 4 days. The revised model that came out this summer has changed how the internal buttons are built, with reinforcement behind the plastic, so they are less likely to crack.
Count me as another who loves her Nook. Of course, I have to agree with others, including Sarah, in that I really think it just depends on the person. Maybe if I’d gotten a Kindle first, I’d be a Kindle diehard. There were many reasons I went with the Nook, though, and every time I’m in Target, I fiddle with the Kindle on display and walk away confident as ever that I made the right choice for me, in getting the Nook. One of the main reasons being the weight difference, actually. The lightness of the Kindle kind of scares me, maybe irrationally so, but I really love the weight of my Nook. And I love love LOVE the touchscreen. I feel kind of bad for those who have experienced frustration with it, as the page-swipe is one of my absolute favorite features. With it in its case (and maybe without, although it never leaves its case), I’m able to hold it one-handed like a paperback and page-swipe with my thumb, and it works perfectly every time. Also, add mine to those who give B&N customer service a thumbs-up. Every transaction and question I’ve had regarding the Nook has been very promptly and courteously handled.
Most of all, though, I’m just in love with e-readers as a whole. I used to be a voracious reader, especially when I lived in a pedestrian-friendly city and took public transportation everywhere. Now I spend almost all my time on the go in a car, and my reading dropped to an all-time low. I’m a multi-book reader, so that was a frustration, too, because my nightstand would wind up with stacks of partly-read books that mostly gathered dust because it was too much hassle and commitment to take them anywhere. With my Nook, though, I’ve read more in the past five months than in the past five years. I’m not crazy enough to consider Nooking and driving, but it does sit next to me in my car, and yeah, when I’m stopped at a long light or I’m in the drive-through I get a paragraph or two in. And I’m able to covertly read on the job, too, which is great since the work I do is pretty repetitive and mindless at times (consider it’s like listening to headphones while doing data entry).
My only frustrations are really a matter of impatience. I’m impatient for the publishing industry to get its act together about pricing and making available books in e-format before they make the same mistakes the music industry did with the mp3 format. And I’m impatient for the Nook’s next firmware upgrade and hoping they get the darned file organization issue addressed. Neither of these outweighs my joy over this new technology, however.
Followup comment!
Indeed, I agree that Kindle vs. Nook vs. Sony really is all a matter of personal preference. The various readers are moving closer to one another in terms of actual functionality, so eventually it’ll just be a question of which specific bell or whistle you might want for your personal reading needs.
Also, let me note that my perturbation with B&N customer service has NEVER been with the in-store people in Seattle, who’ve always been awesome. So was the one person I spoke with when I actually called in about the ongoing “why can’t I read an epub file in this Mac client you SAID was supposed to be able to read epub files?” issue. My frustration has more been with the whole question of the front lines of B&N customer service really not being able to give me the information I need to answer those questions to my satisfaction. (Read: I’m a techie, so tier 1 tech support is not enough for me, when I need info. Tier 2 tech support is more my speed.)
And yeah, I’m also desperately waiting for the next firmware upgrade. If they can fix the syncing issue and give us nook users some file organization that doesn’t suck (read: “any file organization at all”), that’d be lovely.
Excellent timing for this thread! I received a nook for my birthday two week ago but have yet to do more than figure out how to read a book. I’m a law student so reading (cases) pdfs is important to me but I was disappointed in my trial at doing that last week. I’ve since downloaded ECalibre and reformatted to ePub but haven’t plugged the nook back in to transfer the reformatted files to see if they are readable.
I wanted a nook (birthday gift buyer has been feeling me out for months and bought a kindle for himself) because: 1) pdfs, 2) I like barnes and noble because I’m a loyal customer and because I want Amazon to have competition, 3) the 1984 debacle, 4) the more open format.
Once my warranty is up I plan to softroot it.
Me too! I had a Nook, the buttons cracked and while I waited for the replacement, I fell in love with the Opus. I tried the new Sony Pocket, but it had a few issues i didn’t expect (accidental page turns, fingerprints creating glare at night) and i took it back to the store. I’m trying an iPad but its so darned heavy and i haven’t found a case that works for bed reading on my side.
I really love my nook as well. I call it Lil Bastard – LB for short. I work at a public library and I decided on the nook after test driving on that a co-worker had. The Overdrive system has so amny titles that I can borrow for free, that I have only bought ONE book from BN since I got the reader in August. EVerything else I have read has been on loan from the library. I easily sideloaded the older pdf books I had from other ebook sites and shopping is just a little too easy. A couple of clicks and it’s magically appeared on LB. It doesn’t really feel like I’m spending money, so I have to restrain myself.
A way to organize my books into various folders would be great and surfing the web is a little odd since you navigate with the LCD touchscreen at the bottom while reading the e-ink screen at the top. Still, I love reading books on LB and I have actually bought fewer paper books and ebooks thanks to the massive Clevnet online collection. And the reader only cost me $7.50 after I used all my rewards and gift cards!!!
love my nook for all the reasons already said!
I love my nook! Any reasons I list would pretty much repeat the comments from above. I will say that I am NOT a Kindle fan because of their “does not play well with others” attitude, very similar to the Apple/iPod issue when they first arrived … I am a librarian, so as I thought when I purchased an mp3 player years ago, an essential feature was to be compatible with Overdrive, what my library system uses to lend free audio and ebooks. Also, the fact that amazon says that the reason they are not compatible with other formats is something along the lines of we make such big strides so quickly, no one else can keep up…Holier than thou much? Needless to say, I was completely turned off by Kindle.
With my nook I’ve been able to purchase books from all sorts of places and can download and sideload with ease. When I bring it to work I show it off to staff (and some customers, too). I love my funky purple & orange Peace/Love Johnathan Adler cover, too!
One thing that is extremely cool is that my library system has actually purchased 60 nooks and by the end of the year, will be loaning them out to library customers. They will be preloaded with oodles of best-sellers and customers will be able to use the nook to borrow books from OverDrive.
My brother and I are 19 and 21, respectively, and we both got Nooks for Hanukkah. Neither of us knew squat about e-readers, and I still don’t, except that I was a pretty voracious reader before and liked the idea of carrying a library around in a teensy sliver of plastic. Without having any experience with other e-readers, here are the pros and cons:
Pros-
-The touch screen. I know it lags, but looking through the cover art in color is really useful, especially when I’m looking for a book I saw casually on the shelf at the grocery store and don’t remember the title, but damn if there isn’t a really hot guy with red angel wings on the cover.
-The LendMe feature. My brother and I trade books like baseball cards, and this prevents having to buy two of the same copies or having to actually switch devices.
-Google books. Half of my storage is devoted to classics I got for free. Since i missed out on a lot of such required reading during grade school, this makes me extremely happy.
-Charge will last for days if left in sleep mode.
Cons-
-Freezes up every once in a while. It’s easy to fix, but really annoying.
-Occasionally wipes bookmarks and place. This isn’t as much of a problem after they added the go-to-page feature, but again, really annoying.
-Long-ass lags for everything but reading. Keyboard has a two-second lag between letters and freezes if you try to type faster. Paging through in the shop is another two-second lag, not counting connection speed. Oh, and always shop on the device, never on the website itself—you will wait a solid hour before you get your book, often longer.
So… yeah. my opinion. Here’s your two cents and grain of salt.
My husband loves his Nook. It must be good for big man hands 😉
I much prefer my Sony.
First, let me say that my kids are young enough that I hope to be forgiven for reading too much Dr. Seuss. ( Can you read too much Dr. Seuss? )
Next, to address that pesky name. I believe they stole it from Dr. Seuss. I quote:
“We took a look. We saw a Nook. One his head he had a hook. On his hook he had a book. On his book was ‘How to Cook’. … But a Nook can’t read, so a Nook can’t cook. SO…what good to a Nook is a hook cook book?” From, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.
Or at least that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!
NOOK had me at freebies, but like owning a time share condominium, it only pays for itself if you work the system. I love scooting into B&N on Fridays for the NEW free reads. As a result, I’ve been introduced to authors I wouldn’t have (or not until the moon turned to green cheese, anyway) purchased. Not because I hadn’t heard of them but because I just have so many other titles in my TBR pile and TBP list that I would never have gotten around to it. So, thank you NOOK, for introducing me to Karen Marie Moning, Jim Butcher, and especially, Elizabeth Berg.
I shop Amazon for lots of things, but for some reason I hate shopping books on their site (too cluttered for my ADD?). As a result, I have always been a BN girl. When it came time to buy an e-reader, I bought the one that worked with BN’s site. I also was not a fan of the Kindle’s keyboard, which seemed to get in my way when I test drove it. That said, I love my nook (ha!). I have a silicon “condom” cover, and put a screen protector on it, and it seems to be holding up just fine eight months later. I also like the nook app for my android phone- all my books are there, for me to pick up and read anywhere, anytime.
I agree with others who have said it is a personal choice. But I haven’t had any issues with my nook that a two minute search on the nook forums hasn’t fixed.
A note on e-readers in general- When packing for a trip, it is great not to have to pack my usual 10 paperbacks anymore.
I love and adore my nook. I was anti ereader just like i had been anti ipod before i was given one as a gift.
i like the e-ink no glare feature and the font choices and font size customizability works for me and my control issues. It goes back to the furthest-read point w/o bookmarking so I don’t have to bend pages or remember page #‘s. The instant gratification is seductive considering i live 90 min from a bookstore.
i get most of my books from bn and I’ve enjoyed the free ebooks featured weekly ranging from harlequins and diana gabaldon to the fairy tales of hans christian anderson.
i have a nifty red cover that folds back and snaps behind to stay out of the way.
I like the big buttons. I can’t even stand the teensy qwerty keys on cell phones so this one works well for moi.
After a lot of research, I went with The Nook and I haven’t regretted it even for a moment. Yes, the start up time is slower than Kindle, but I’ve had no issues with mine so far. I like that I have the ability to borrow library books, I appreciate being tied to a brick-and-mortar store, and I love the overall design and weight. The freebies B&N offers aren’t bad either 🙂
Everyone has to choose the reader that’s right for them, and for me the Nook has exceeded my expectations.
I’ve had a Kindle for over 2 years now (the original and now the K2). I got a Sony Pocket reader about a year ago, then sold it and bought a nook when I found out that I could put Sony (and Kobo & Borders) books on a nook, but not B&N books on the Sony. I had free books from all thanks to iPhone reader apps. I ended up getting my nook on eBay (didn’t particularly feel like rewarding B&N for adding that extra layer of DRM to their books so I couldn’t read them on the Sony).
As a device, I much prefer my Kindle. It’s as though the nook developers looked at Kindle and thought “Now how can we add at least one step to any given function?” I don’t understand why they didn’t do some research into what Kindle owners were clamoring for (organization!). Kindle has it now, but users had been asking for it from the get-go. I’m underwhelmed by nook’s LED screen, it’s too sensitive at times, yet not sensitive enough for page swiping (and yes, I’ve watched the instructional videos). Kindle’s keyboard is incredibly useful for creating collections. I want to be able to delete a book from my nook directly on the nook, rather than having to hook it up to the computer. People look at the Kindle and think it looks clunky and nook is sleek. But from a functional point of view, using the Kindle is much “sleeker”. I guess I prefer function over form.
From stories I’ve read (and personal experience with Amazon’s Kindle customer service) I’ll take Amazon for customer service hands down. Don’t need a physical body – I can call to get a question answered, I can get a replacement Kindle overnighted to me (more than once) and in fact, just did last week when my daughter’s Kindle died from accidental causes. And frankly I’m turned off by some of the either uninformed or lying salespersons who tell shoppers things about Kindle (and probably Sony as well) that just aren’t true. Amazon offers a lot more freebies (recent/current publications) than all the other sellers combined, their bookstore is bigger, and even with the heinous agency model, their prices average lower. Even if users were totally locked in to Amazon for acquiring books (which they aren’t), when they have the best selection & best prices, that isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Library books weren’t even in my mind when I bought the nook – my local library doesn’t have Overdrive or any eBooks that interest me. But after getting the nook I found out there are libraries I can access for eBooks even though I’m not in their local area, so have been reading library books on it. I have yet to spend a dime on books for my nook with B&N. And I’ve seen more than a few people say the same thing – they use it for library books and free books from B&N & books from other sources. And therein lies a potential problem for B&N. If enough people are primarily reading freebies and library books on their nooks, it becomes a bad business model and how committed is B&N to eBooks & nook long-term? They’ve abandoned eBooks once already. Amazon’s business model is better, and if they’re true to their word, they’re committed to eBooks.
Bottom line, though, is that I want them all to succeed. Kindle, Sony, nook, Kobo & all the others. I want eBooks to succeed. I don’t want to go back to paper books. I can’t adjust the font size. It’s too easy to lose my place. I get distracted by the opposite page. I’m spoiled, and not ashamed to admit it.
I have a Nook also and I love it. I like being able to transfer the books I’d bought and loaded onto my computer. I don’t mind having a section for books downloaded from B&N and those from elsewhere. What I want though, it the option to create folders within the library for different kinds of books. Or so I can organize by author or whatever. I mean – I’m a librarian – if I can’t organize my books I start to feel an encroaching OCD-like anxiety.
For the free e-book lovers out there. Yes, when you click on the “free e-books” link on the B&N web site most of the same books are listed. However, if you go to search (on either the web site or the onboard Nook store) and type in 0.00 as your search term then launch the search, you’ll get the list of the nearly 100K free books available. The bad thing about that search is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to SORT the search. Very frustrating. But at least you get past the 100 or so books that B&N pushes through their free link.
And question… what is the free chocolate of which you speak? I’m all about chocolate but I didn’t know I could get free chocolate with my Nook. Please…tell me how. Pretty please? With chocolate on top?
If you type in the price (0.00) you are looking for, plus the topic/genre (for example: 0.00 mystery), this will bring up free books of that type.
Diff topic: has nobody else ever heard of a freakin “book nook”? There was even a used bookstore in my hometown called The Book Nook. It’s a PLACE with BOOKS in it! Kinda like a freakin nook HAS BOOKS IN IT! Kinda like a BREAKFAST NOOK is a place you have your BREAKFAST IN. Jeez. Enough with the name shame already.
You do realize that the iPod touch isn’t capitalized either, right? 😉
Hey nook folks, I have a question for you: can you borrow library books using the on-board Wifi access, or do you have to download then load them onto the nook via USB?
SB Sarah – Neither Nook nor any other E-Ink device can use wireless download to activate library books. This is due to the way OverDrive uses Adobe Digital Editions desktop to create a token for the book to expire.
So all E-Ink devices have to transfer library books via USB, after the Desktop authorizes the book file.
I’m anxiously awaiting Bluefire Reader’s iPad app adding that functionality.
Also re this:
Though Overdrive has announced plans (at Library Journal’s e-Book Summit) to make this function available, I don’t know what devices it would work on or how.
I just checked out library books this very weekend onto my nook for the first time. I did indeed have to do it via download of a small file off of my local library’s site, which I then opened in Adobe Digital Editions. That turned into the actual book, and I plunked that down onto the nook via USB.
Worked mostly fine, although I did have to specifically remember to jump through a couple of extra hoops. I had to:
1) Download the file off my library’s site
2) Open ADE
3) Click on the file to launch it so ADE could see it (if I didn’t have ADE open first, I got an error message about ADE wanting an update, which it didn’t actually need)
4) Close ADE and plug in my nook in the USB port
5) Re-open ADE so it could see the nook
6) Copy the book down to the device
7) Profit! Or at least, Reading!
More complex a process than it really needed to be but once I figured it out, the books (of which there are two) made it all shiny-like onto my device. I will be doing this more often to try to whittle down my Enormous Reading List of Enormousness, since even with the extra annoying steps, it’s worth it to not have to carry around ginormous hardbacks.
Thank you Anna and Jennifer and Bree!!!