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eorWe bought a Barnes and Noble Nook on Monday. Since then I've been unable to pry it from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derien's hands. I think it may end up like Charlton Heston's gun.
My brief technology side review:
The e-ink screen looks nice and though I haven't spent any time reading on it, it does seem pretty readable. It has about 4 fonts, each available in 5 or 6 sizes. Battery life is long because battery power is used only for screen rewrites and wireless activity. The wireless is easy to turn off by switching to airplane mode. The built in memory should be sufficient for anyone for use as an e-reader and will only become a choke point if you use it as an audio player or flash drive as well.
Possible wear points are the touch screen, the buttons and the reading screens exposure to scratches. I will be interested to see how the buttons hold up. B&N should have come out with a standard protective case. Cases are sold as user add-ons, but the unit really shouldn't leave the factory without a case. It's just too easy for the reader screen to end up in contact with an abrasive surface without the buyer even realizing it. Don't set your buyers up for failure just to sell an accessory. Sell the premium leather case as an accessory.
The Nook shows up as a hard drive when attached to a PC or Mac. This makes dealing with them very easy, no special drivers or proprietary software. Personal content is loaded in either e-pub or PDF format. The PDF format will naturally be much more space intensive. For practice I loaded a e-pub from Project Gutenberg and it went on easily and without a snag. It was so easy I did it again just to show the studio audience. I have to investigate the limitations of the e-pub format and see how many fancy things I can do in personal files I stick on the computer (pictures, links, etc).
Charging is accomplished via a USB cord either plugged into a computer or using the supplied adapter, right into a household wall socket. Very smart, very easy.
The touch screen takes some getting used to. Most humans have fingers way too large for this tiny screen. Expect some frustration in the early going.
For wireless communication, the Nook uses either Wi-Fi or AT&T cellular towers. These transition between these two is seamless to the user and speed is reasonable for catalog and purchase transactions.
My brief marketing side review:
Most e-reader marketing is 90 percent deception and 10 percent reality. The marketing of the Nook is more toward the reality side and I give them credit for being better than most. I'll list out areas where they are a little fuzzy on their language.
1. Lending: Lending is only available on certain titles. This is on a book by book, publisher by publisher basis. Any hint that it is otherwise is borderline deception. If you look at the number of books available and the number of books that are lendable, the percentage is pretty small. The other catch on lending is that each title can be lent only once for one 14 day period. Lending is much more a marketing feature and not so much a user feature.
2. Connecting through your computer: The marketing pitch we got implied your library would be stored simultaneously on your computer and B&N. That way if B&N became unavailable, you would still have your ebooks and be able to load them on your Nook. Thus far, I have found no way to make this true, although I haven't investigated it thoroughly. If there is a way, it's not straightforward. When the Nook is connected to the computer it acts as a passive device, you can't interact with the Nook interface while it is connected. In short, if you want to insure you won't get caught in a bankruptcy or service change, keep your entire library on your Nook, keep your flash updates current, and learn how to load personal content.
Overall:
The big pluses are ease of use, ease of adding user content, respectable battery life coupled with versatile charging. For a book fan looking for an e-reader, this is a good bit of technology. It doesn't have a lot of extra bells and whistles and it doesn't come with a premium price.
derien's hands. I think it may end up like Charlton Heston's gun.My brief technology side review:
The e-ink screen looks nice and though I haven't spent any time reading on it, it does seem pretty readable. It has about 4 fonts, each available in 5 or 6 sizes. Battery life is long because battery power is used only for screen rewrites and wireless activity. The wireless is easy to turn off by switching to airplane mode. The built in memory should be sufficient for anyone for use as an e-reader and will only become a choke point if you use it as an audio player or flash drive as well.
Possible wear points are the touch screen, the buttons and the reading screens exposure to scratches. I will be interested to see how the buttons hold up. B&N should have come out with a standard protective case. Cases are sold as user add-ons, but the unit really shouldn't leave the factory without a case. It's just too easy for the reader screen to end up in contact with an abrasive surface without the buyer even realizing it. Don't set your buyers up for failure just to sell an accessory. Sell the premium leather case as an accessory.
The Nook shows up as a hard drive when attached to a PC or Mac. This makes dealing with them very easy, no special drivers or proprietary software. Personal content is loaded in either e-pub or PDF format. The PDF format will naturally be much more space intensive. For practice I loaded a e-pub from Project Gutenberg and it went on easily and without a snag. It was so easy I did it again just to show the studio audience. I have to investigate the limitations of the e-pub format and see how many fancy things I can do in personal files I stick on the computer (pictures, links, etc).
Charging is accomplished via a USB cord either plugged into a computer or using the supplied adapter, right into a household wall socket. Very smart, very easy.
The touch screen takes some getting used to. Most humans have fingers way too large for this tiny screen. Expect some frustration in the early going.
For wireless communication, the Nook uses either Wi-Fi or AT&T cellular towers. These transition between these two is seamless to the user and speed is reasonable for catalog and purchase transactions.
My brief marketing side review:
Most e-reader marketing is 90 percent deception and 10 percent reality. The marketing of the Nook is more toward the reality side and I give them credit for being better than most. I'll list out areas where they are a little fuzzy on their language.
1. Lending: Lending is only available on certain titles. This is on a book by book, publisher by publisher basis. Any hint that it is otherwise is borderline deception. If you look at the number of books available and the number of books that are lendable, the percentage is pretty small. The other catch on lending is that each title can be lent only once for one 14 day period. Lending is much more a marketing feature and not so much a user feature.
2. Connecting through your computer: The marketing pitch we got implied your library would be stored simultaneously on your computer and B&N. That way if B&N became unavailable, you would still have your ebooks and be able to load them on your Nook. Thus far, I have found no way to make this true, although I haven't investigated it thoroughly. If there is a way, it's not straightforward. When the Nook is connected to the computer it acts as a passive device, you can't interact with the Nook interface while it is connected. In short, if you want to insure you won't get caught in a bankruptcy or service change, keep your entire library on your Nook, keep your flash updates current, and learn how to load personal content.
Overall:
The big pluses are ease of use, ease of adding user content, respectable battery life coupled with versatile charging. For a book fan looking for an e-reader, this is a good bit of technology. It doesn't have a lot of extra bells and whistles and it doesn't come with a premium price.
