Barnes & Noble Won't Give Up On the Nook 132
jfruh writes "Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader line has largerly been regarded as a botched attempt to compete with the Kindle, whose failure has contributed to the bookseller's financial woes. Well, despite earlier statements that the company was abandoning it as a hardware platform, now the B&N CEO insists that the company is committed to the product line and the new Nooks are in development."
Re:The Nook is a good example (Score:5, Informative)
History is filled with superior products that failed in the marketplace. I've looked at and tried both the Kindle and the Nook and if I had to choose one of the two it would be the Nook. I really have no need for a 7" tablet though so I passed. I think Amazon's marketing is simply much stronger than B&N's. Most people that buy either a Nook or Kindle tablet seem happy enough with it so I don't think there is that much to choose between the two, for me it was the SD slot that made me like the Nook better but a lot of people don't care about that.
Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't have a physical button for page turning, but tapping the edge of the screen will flip the page; you don't have to gesture for it.
The Nook Simple Touch does have those buttons.
If you ask me (which I guess the OP did), the Nook Simple Touch is a great little device, but the Nook Tablets are worthless. Since you can get the Nook App on just about any tablet (including Windows 8 tablets) you might as well get a tablet you actually want and then just install that, if you really want to use Nook ebooks on a tablet. There's no compelling reason to get a Nook Tablet.
The Nook Simple Touch, on the other hand, is a nice, small device that's rugged enough for me to throw in my pocket and carry around all day, if I wanted to. The display is OK. It's an e-ink display, so it works well in bright lights, and if you get the one that has the glow feature, it works in low light too. I don't like any of the fonts that the Simple Touch offers, though.
All that being said - I expect everything applies to the Kindle as well, so - no, there's really no compelling reason to choose the Nook. There's a very good reason to get a Kindle instead: Amazon has a much better selection. (Yeah, I kind of regret my Nook purchase, but not enough to replace it with a Kindle.)
Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)
All that being said - I expect everything applies to the Kindle as well, so - no, there's really no compelling reason to choose the Nook. There's a very good reason to get a Kindle instead: Amazon has a much better selection. (Yeah, I kind of regret my Nook purchase, but not enough to replace it with a Kindle.)
That's not much of a selling point, since you can install and run Kindle on the Nook, but you can't install Nook reader on the Kindle. So that means the Nook actually has a bigger selection.
Re:Yaay! (Score:2, Informative)
Usually it's a Text book + Reference book. Or two cook books.
Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Nook is a good example (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree, if you buy an ebook from Amazon you're pretty much stuck with Amazon devices. But, Nook uses epub with DRM from Adobe, so, my Nook can read books from just about any store that sells them. Whereas Nook requires that you get the books converted, or stick with Amazon books.
I've personally bought ebooks from Oreilly, Smashwords, B&N, Kobo and Ebooks.com, and they all work without converting them. And even the stores that sell DRM ebooks, I can load those without having to crack the DRM. Which I couldn't do with Kindle, unless I buy from Amazon.
But, more importantly, if I decide I don't like the next generation of Nook and my current one breaks, I can switch to a competing ebook reader, without having to crack my library or buy it a second time. Something that's impossible with Kindle.
Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)
I Have a Nook, and a Kindle.
The Nook Simple Touch is the best eBook reader I have ever used, and I have used pretty much every major version of every major brand that has been released.
I read a lot, several novels a week on average, and so small things make a huge impact for me.
The Nook has a very nice tactile feel. Its coated with a rubberized like surface that is much easier to hold then the standard hi-gloss body plastic on most devices. The shape of the device, particularly the back panel, is very ergonomic, and easy to hold. It has the all important page turn buttons, a huge requirement for me. It has fairly good battery life, and the GUI is easy to user and understand.
There are some flaws.
You can't delete a file from the device, you have to plug it in to a computer to do so. The home page, which is different then your library seems useless to me, but that could perhaps be for people who read magazines, and other documents on the device. The device requires you to swipe across the screen to unlock, which can cause problems because the touch screen isn't capacitive touch, it uses infrared to detect touch, so if there is any dust around the edges of the screen, touch will fail.
Overall though, I love the device.
Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:4, Informative)
I have both the Nook Simple Touch Glow and the Kindle Paperwhite. As far as I can tell they are exactly equivalent in terms of the competitive niche. I much prefer reading on the Kindle. It's smaller, litter, slimmer, and the lighting is more agreeable. The nook is oddly thick and the buttons are all much too hard to push, at least when it's new (as mine is).
The nook's lighting is more uniform but the light sources are too close to the edge of the screen, which means the glare from the source bugs me while reading. The brightness controls on the kindle allow for finer adjustment and the minimum light level is lower.
The kindle's almost complete lack of buttons appeals to me, since I'm already used to reading on tablet and phone touch screens. Nook's two different power/home buttons make no real sense to me, and the page turn buttons go ignored in favor of swiping or tapping on the touch screen.
Both screens are very pleasant to look at when the light is enabled, but kind of oddly colored when it's off. The kindle's higher pixel count is noticeable, but not so much better that I'd ignore the nook. Neither screen is very quick to respond to touches or page turns. The kindle is a bit faster than the nook, most of the time.
Shopping, buying, downloading, etc is a bit easier on the nook, in my opinion. Both interfaces are more than good enough though.
The really big differences show up in the infrastructure surrounding the gadgets.
B&N's web site is, in my opinion, horrifically bad. I hate everything about it. Buying items fails frequently, for no apparent reason. I never even look at their site anymore. If I want to buy a B&N ebook, I find it via http://www.goodreads.com/ [goodreads.com], http://inkmesh.com/ [inkmesh.com], or by showrooming on Amazon's site, then buy it on the nook itself.
Amazon's site is better. Searching is limited and imprecise, compared to real search engines like Google. The number of items on screen is fixed and too few, but I can live with that.
The deciding factor, for me, is how many restriction Amazon puts on the kindle. Their format is a proprietary version of the old Mobipocket "standard" with their own layer of DRM. Nook uses ePub with Adobe DRM. Both DRM schemes are easily removed, but after removal, Nook books leave you with a wonderfully useful ePub, where kindle books are still in a (somewhat) proprietary format. If I want to load an ePub on my kindle, I have to convert it first. If I want to load a kindle book on almost any other reader, I have to convert it first. Conversion isn't hard, using Calibre, but I have noticed that layout and formatting is never quite right after conversion.
I'd love to read more in the Kindle Paperwhite, but Amazon has crippled it too much to be of use to me. I don't like the physical experience of reading on the Nook Simple Touch Glow... it's just too chunky and clunky. Ultimately, I choose to keep reading mostly on my Android tablets. I buy my ebooks from places that sell them in ePub and read them on devices that support ePub.