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Nook Does the new Barnes & Noble e-reader have what it takes to snuff Amazon's Kindle? By Martin Kozicki You heard it here first: reading books is cool again. What the iPod is to the Walkman, the latest in e-reader technology is to the hardback novel. While Amazon's fashionable Kindle device has held a solid lead on the e-reader market since its late 2007 release, Barnes & Noble now offers the ultra-chic and technologically superior Nook in the hopes of earning the top spot in the up-and-coming e-reader market. The Basics Competitively priced at $259, the Nook comes with all the trappings you would expect in a modern e-reader. It is small and compact, measuring 7.7 inches high by 4.9 inches wide and a half-inch thick. It is also a mere ounce heavier than the Kindle, weighing in at 11.2 ounces. Just like the Kindle, the Nook comes with 2GB of on-board memory, which should hold approximately 1500 e-books. Where the Nook trumps the Kindle, though, is that it offers an easily accessible MicroSD slot that supports up to 16GB of expansion memory, or roughly 12,000 more books. Almost all e-readers now feature rechargeable batteries, but the Nook is unique in that the battery is accessible by removing the back plate, which means it can be replaced should it start losing its recharging capabilities, or if you want to keep a spare battery handy for long trips. This might not be necessary, though, as the Nook boasts a 10-day battery life, and can fully recharge in just 3.5 hours via the included micro-USB->AC adapter. It should be noted, however, that activating the wireless connection feature can severely drag down battery life for prolonged use. Still, after about a week of casual daily reading, occasional trips to the online store and fetching new free content from B&N each morning, this reviewer's Nook battery was still at 50% capacity. As such, this might not be an issue for most, especially if you don't foresee a 10-day absence from any type of power source. Display & Navigation While both the Nook and the Kindle offer a crisp 6" grayscale E-ink reading display (which is, to the uninformed, meant to mimic actual paper by being unlit and matte in texture) the Nook skips the Kindle's integrated keyboard in favor of a 3.5" color LCD touch screen.
When it first turns on, the color screen is eye-catching and gives the Nook a very trendy appearance, making most other e-readers seem bland by comparison. However, the color screen almost does its job too well in the sense that its vibrancy and luminance can make the E-ink reading screen appear dull and dark. Thankfully, the color touch screen does go dark after a few seconds of non-use, leaving your eyes to adjust properly to the reading screen, and, hopefully, appreciate its crispness and clarity more fully.
Software & Content Unlike any other e-readers currently on the market, the Nook runs on an Android-based operating system. Google's OS is open source, meaning that, in addition to the software already on the Nook, you can expect to find future enhancements, upgrades, and applications available, likely either free or at a significantly low price. The decision to make the Nook run on open source software is, perhaps, the greatest advantage it will have in what is sure to be a blossoming market in e-readers over the next several years. (Note: Tech-savvy sleuths have already discovered a variety of features hidden within the Nook software that will likely be officially released in the near future. Speech recognition, anyone?) Another advantage to the Nook over e-readers like the Sony PRS-300 or the Samsung Papyrus is that the Nook is affiliated with Barnes & Noble. This means easy access to hundreds of thousands of e-books in an organized online store that you can download wirelessly to your Nook from any Barnes & Noble store, just about anywhere there is Wi-Fi network, or wherever there is AT&T 3G coverage (no contract or subscription required).
One clever feature is the ability to lend any e-books you've purchased to a friend--once per book, per friend--for up to 14 days, a feature unique to the Nook with the proprietary LendMe technology. The good news is that your friend doesn't need to have a Nook to benefit from this; you can lend e-books to anyone with the Barnes & Noble e-reader software, which is available on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, and BlackBerry. The bad news is that, like a physical book, you cannot read it yourself while it is on loan to your friend, but you will get it back once the 14 day period is up. Granted, this feature is not without its drawbacks, and not every e-book is capable of being lent, but it is a good option for bookworms who enjoy sharing their favorite titles with friends, family, or a fellow book club member. In addition to the B&N e-book store, users can obtain a variety of free e-books from other sites like Project Gutenberg, and then convert them to a Nook-friendly format with free software such as Calibre, available on both PC and Mac. These third-party sites make tens of thousands of public domain titles available to the public, legally, much like a public library. Between these sites and the official B&N/Google Books titles, there is no lack of content available for your Nook. Beyond just books, the Nook also allows for browsing of some compatible magazines, blogs and newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Being that B&N is, primarily, a bookstore, these additional content sources have not yet reached maturity on the Nook (currently there are only a handful of each available to read) but just like the Kindle, it is expected that the Nook will gradually add more content of your choice over time. (continued...)
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© , Martin Kozicki. All rights reserved. |
Aside from page turning, which is done by a pair of buttons on both the left and right sides of the
reading screen, all other navigation within menus or individual books is handled through the touch
screen. You can navigate the menus, shop the B&N e-book store, browse your library via title
selection or an Apple-esque cover flow, select chapter or bookmarks, and interact with your Nook
wholly via the touch screen's colorful menus. It isn't as responsive as, say, an iPhone's touch
screen, but it does the job. The latency of the touch screen becomes most apparent (and annoying)
when trying to use, for example, the built-in dictionary (great feature!) to look up an unfamiliar
word that is half-way down a page, pressing the touch screen arrow controls again, and again, and
again, with a slight delay between each press. If there were any way B&N could use a firmware
update to speed up responsiveness, it would be a welcomed upgrade.
