The Barnes & Noble E-Book Reader

I think I may get this...

Wired Magazine
Epicenter The Business of Tech
Barnes & Noble’s Shiny, Sharing-Friendly ‘Nook’ eBook Reader

* By Eliot Van Buskirk Email Author
* October 20, 2009 |
* 5:25 pm |

The Nook will be available for pre-order starting Tuesday night for $260 at Nook.com, and will ship in November. It has a 6-inch, “paper-like,” 16-level grayscale display that supports up to five fonts and various font sizes. It can read a user’s PDFs, as well as the 1 million-plus books, magazines and newspapers available in Barnes & Noble’s eBook store.

The device connects to the Barnes & Noble eBook store using a free 3G AT&T connection, but lacks a web browser “because those are clumsy” on eReaders, Lynch says. It includes support for the ePub eBook format, FictionWise and PDF, as well as RSS feeds from the internet. However, you can’t subscribe to any old RSS feed. Instead, Barnes & Noble selects certain feeds to convert to ePub, then sends them out each morning for a fee that varies by publisher.

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My only concern is that I'd want to turn off that color LCD display when reading.

Ooh, that looks pretty sweet. I think I've seen that before.
I've thought about getting that, or the Amazon Kindle, but I decided against it because it would be too expensive to buy it and then load all of my favorite books on.
Things like that look great for travel, though. Instead of 20 books for a week-long vacation, I could just throw it in my backpack and be off.

I was just looking at that a couple hours ago, lol. The nook looks brilliant, except that their books cost more than the kindle's, that was really the main thing that turned me off to it. I won't use the text to speech, so the fact that Nook lacks that doesn't matter, nor does Kindle's lack of touch screen, sharing of books and annotations and notes and all the other cool, nifty features Nook sports.

The only dilemma between them that I have is Nook has more books (but for how long?) but Kindle's books are cheaper than those on the shelves and those that Nook offers (but again, for how long?)

As both of these points are apt to change considerably now that there's actually solid competition in the field with Kindle, who can really make a decision? Nook has lots of really neat feature and nifty little touches like the color screen, but perhaps I'm just bland, but I want an e-reader to read books. So long as I can get books for less (I'm not paying for the printing costs any more so I expect it to be less) and I can get the books I want, I'm happy.

So Nook has the books, but Kindle has the prices. Now watch the next generation of both come out, Kindle with more books and Nook with lower prices.

Actually, if it weren't for the fact that Nook was more expensive in their book prices, it'd be pretty perfect and there'd be no question. As it is, how are you ever going to begin making your money back? With Kindle (at the moment anyway) after approximately 259 books, you've paid for the e-reader in how much money you've saved. And considering it can hold over a thousand books, that's not too bad. Other than that though, the Nook is pretty awesome. Key features I noted was the ability to switch out the battery and the option to add space later if you need. With Kindle, once the battery is done for good, via accident or natural causes that prevent it from charging again, it's done and you need a new Kindle. Same goes for the space. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Of one thing there is no question: Amazon must be ticked. Real competition, and right before the holiday season, too!

This seems like a dream to me-- both the Nook and the Kindle --but I want to wait until both products are around a bit longer. I want to get a lot of opinions and make sure any bugs are worked out before I make such a huge investment. (A lesson I learned from upgrading to Windows Vista immediately. -_-)

I didn't know the books on the Nook are more expensive, but the Nook does have 500,000 free ebooks. The problem with the Kindle is that you can only get books from Amazon. But, the Nook can get books from anywhere, including Google's free public domain books. So, for example, you'd have to pay for Mark Twain on the Kindle, but you could get it for free on the Nook.

Yeah, just don't lock yourself into any DRM scheme. If you buy books, buy them in an open format.

Man, I'm just waiting. I've been waiting for years for ebook readers to become mainstream; the problem is the price. Gradually it'll go down... there's also tons of competition in the market right now (Sony, Amazon, B&N, and lots of other small name companies), which is great.

I do really like the navigational LCD screen on the Nook (stupidest name ever). Definitely a step in the right direction.

Pork

But, the Nook can get books from anywhere, including Google's free public domain books.

That, I didn't see! Very cool.

The 500k free books looks really neat, but how many of those are classic literature stories? Mark Twain is great, but what about the rest? While definitely interesting to study, a lot of classic literature is...bland? How many of those 500,000 free books are relatively new?

Still, if the prices weren't higher on the books, Nook definitely looks like the way to go. That you can get books from anywhere is even better. Really, the book prices are the deciding factor for me, seeing as they're both the exact same price right now. Everything else is just a perk.

Next model, though! Bet the book prices will have dropped enough by then that Kindle will really begin to have some serious competition, not that they don't already.

Anything written before 1923 is in the public domain. Anything written in or after 1923 you're going to have to pay for.