Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Books Handhelds Hardware

Barnes & Noble Won't Give Up On the Nook 132

Posted by timothy from the there's-a-niche-for-the-nook dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Barnes & Noble Won't Give Up On the Nook More

Barnes & Noble Won't Give Up On the Nook

Comments Filter:
  • I have an older Kindle, and 2 Kobo's. I've never tried a Nook (can't recall ever seeing one in a store up here in Canada but the Kobo's can be found in lots of stores) so I can't tell if it's better or not. I don't tend to judge by features only, I like trying them out. A big selling point with me is there needs to be a button to turn the page and it has to be comfortable to hold with 1 hand while turning pages, something you can't really do with touch gestures to turn pages. Basically when I'm asking is,

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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 main selling point (for me) is that you can (for up to two hours a day while connected to Barnes and Noble's wifi) read any book you want for free.

      • Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)

        by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @12:51PM (#44664505) Homepage Journal

        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)

          by Curunir_wolf ( 588405 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:03PM (#44664577) Homepage Journal

          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: (Score:3)

            by Brianwa ( 692565 )
            Yeah, the Nook lineup seems to a be a lot more open than the Kindle. You can also root most (all?) Nooks if you want to. I have a simple touch and really enjoy it.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

            I bought a Nook HD because the price was right. Yes, it is sans camera and 3G, but it does make for a fairly inexpensive tablet, and you can easily run a recent version of Android on it. For security, there are apps that implement EncFS so I just create a volume and stash my files in that.

            As for an E-reader, it does the job decently, although for long texts, I prefer my e-Ink display Kindle Keyboard.

            Only two downsides are its funky charging connector, and the fact that if it fails to boot eight times, it

        • Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)

          by hedwards ( 940851 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:27PM (#44664729)

          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: (Score:2)

            by 0123456 ( 636235 )

            I disagree, if you buy an ebook from Amazon you're pretty much stuck with Amazon devices.

            Or Windows, or Linux (through Wine), or an Android tablet or phone, or an iPad or iPhone, or, I believe, a web interface. If it's DRM-free, of course, you can convert it to any other format.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward
              I accidentally a verb.
          • You don't need an Amazon device to read Amazon ebooks.

            I do own a Kindle touch, but I have the Kindle app on my iPhone, iPad, and Macbook. I frequently read various things on every one of those devices depending on the situation.

            The sync up nicely too so that each device will pick where I stopped reading on any other device.
            • You're missing the point. You can only read on devices that Amazon sanctions. Sure, Amazon does provide an iOS and an Android version on top of the Kindle itself, but so do the competitors. And I can load most of those books up in ADE, regardless of store. Adobe itself doesn't have the incentive to keep people restricted to one type of ebook reader or another.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by 0123456 ( 636235 )

                Of course they do. They only exist to support DRM-ed epub.

                Besides, do you really want to tell Adobe every book you read?

                • You want to tell even more evil companies like Amazon and Apple? If you get a DRM free book then you don't need to worry about it and no one will come along later and erase it without your permission.

                  It's moot anyway, I won't use either because I want my books on paper. But if you're insistent on carrying around a device to show off, carry around one that restricts your rights the least.

                • As much as I dislike certain practices that Adobe has, like limiting the availability of Flash and their new pricing scheme for Photoshop, nothing they do is as evil as what Amazon and Apple are up to in the market. Adobe has a huge incentive to permit their software to be used as widely as possible, because that's how they make their money.

                  Amazon and Apple both have a huge incentive to not play well with others and lock people into their ecosystem as much as possible. It remains to be seen if B&N is go

          • 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.

            Wait, what? That's almost right. If I don't like the next generation of nook and my current one breaks, I can install the nook app on another Android tablet. But if I don't like the next generation of Kindle and my current one breaks (actually I have a NST but bear with my example) then I just buy an Android tablet and install the Kindle app on it. I have Kindle on my NST. It works fine. I don't know WTF you are talking about. You're not any more locked into Kindle than you are into Nook.

        • I just bought a Nook Simple Touch from OfficeMax for $59! Besides price my other big selling point was ePub support. I didn't want to buy a device that only works with Amazon and nothing else (unless you do decryption and conversion). I heard that B&N's bookstore is larger than Amazon's but that is just something I heard. I read mostly tech books from O'Reilly so it's not much of an issue for me. The Kindle eInk device does have a better display and some nice extra features but it's not worth over

        • Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:49PM (#44664865)

          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.

          • Nothing much to add to this except that I love my Nook Simple Touch. I hope that new Nooks expand the capability of the Simple Touch (to make it even better at what it does) and not the Tablet.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I have a nook ST with Glowlight, and while I can't tell you much about the Kindles I can tell you that I love my nook. I can easily side-load it with books, it's the right size and very comfortable (more than my original Sony PRS which I fucking LOVED at the time) to hold and read. The button placement makes sense esp. the power button the on the top/back, though the paging buttons on the bezel are just slightly confusing, and I always just swipe instead of using them. I spend as much time as I can in the

          • I like my nook color. But amazon has a better book selection. However my last purchase was a nexus 7(2013). I can install the nook app, and kindle app while having a decent web browser too.

            Sure e-ink is better for reading. But for multifunction a tablet is better

        • The Kindle is chock full of DRM, much more than the Nook has. So on that issue alone, Nook wins.

        • 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.

          Another thing is that the Nook Simple Touch is very easily rooted. After rooting I've got a backlit $120 e-ink tablet running full Android.

          I mostly use it to review Anki, but it is adequate for browsing in Opera, reading books, or most anything else that a tablet does. Without the backlight but with wifi the battery lasts at least 10-12 hours of use, and the screen is absolutely the best screen I've ever use, on any mobile or stationary device.

        • I've also got a Simple Touch, and it's great. It's easier on the eyes than a bright tablet screen, and it does a pretty good job of rendering text.

          If it had a browser on it which could be considered reliably open-able, I'd use it. Without it....well, it's an e-reader, and it's a bloody annoyance because it means I either leave it at home and use it at night, or carry it and leave the tablet home. Neither alternative is good.

      • Yes, the ability to do a 2 hr in store preview of any purchase was a big factor in my choosing the Nook.

        I use it some for entertainment but mostly it is the most convenient way to carry reference books with me when I am on the move. Determining whether a particular reference is going to work well on an ereader sometimes takes a while: does the book depend on diagrams that are crappy on the Nook screen? A lot of publishers just dump the hardcopy version of a book into ereader format without bothering to rev

    • I have an older Kindle, and 2 Kobo's. I've never tried a Nook (can't recall ever seeing one in a store up here in Canada but the Kobo's can be found in lots of stores) so I can't tell if it's better or not. I don't tend to judge by features only, I like trying them out.

      A big selling point with me is there needs to be a button to turn the page and it has to be comfortable to hold with 1 hand while turning pages, something you can't really do with touch gestures to turn pages.

      Basically when I'm asking is, what does Nook bring to the table that the others do not?

      It's pretty similar to current Kindles, but the current 7" Nook HD (my wife has one) feels more comfortable than my equivalent7" Kindle Fire HD for long reading sessions for each of us thanks to a somewhat different curvature to the back. The other thing the Nook has is access to the Google app store, which I won't mention by name because then it sounds dumb.

    • Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hedwards ( 940851 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:20PM (#44664675)
      The main problem with Nook is that they're only available for sale in the US and the UK. They're better than Kindle in most ways. I've had two Nooks, one was the original and the other is Nook Simple Touch Glow. The only reason I upgraded was that I smashed the older one. Anyways, they both feature a MicroSD slot, the ability to buy ebooks from pretty much any store not ending in azon.com. And Nook had a real light before anybody else did. I've used it and the glow light works well. Even lighting across the whole screen without it straining the eyes. Also, Nook was the first reader to get the page flipping right. It has 2 sets of physical buttons so you can turn the page which ever way you hold it. But, it also has the touch screen to turn pages as well. Which works pretty well, except if you accidentally click on a citation link. But, in general the thing about Nook is that it's just solid hardware with good design. The main problem I have with it is that the book shelves are a PITA to use. You have to shelve the books on the device itself, which doesn't work out well if you have a huge number of books.

      • Looks terrible in the store.. You telling me its not bad in the flesh?

        • Looks terrible in the store? None of the ereaders I've seen look appreciably different. Well, not since they dropped the physical keyboard in favor of a touch screen. For the purpose of reading, I've found Nook to do a good job. My main complaint is that it has gimped support for foreign fonts.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nurb432 ( 527695 )

            Yes, it looked terrible in the store. Was not as sharp as the no-glo version ( which i do have, and love ).

            But to be fair, the paper white looked bad to me as well, side by side, until a guy at work bought one and it didn't seem as bad as the 'demo' and was pretty nice. But its still tied to the amazon store, unlike the nook, which makes it a non-option for me. ( i dont want to have to screw with converting everything.. )

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dk20 ( 914954 )
      I live in Canada now, but lived in the US for a while and own a kindle and a few nooks for me and my kids.
      Nook Pro's (just the white book reader, not the tablets)
      - Both the device and its accessories are more reasonably priced then the kindle.
      - Native EPUB support which greatly expands your options.
      - feels nice in your hand
      - user replaceable battery
      - microSD slot which is handy for putting books/music on.
      - Seem more "friendly" then others (not as locked down).
      - Somewhat stylish (I like the white, w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tricorn ( 199664 )

        User replaceable battery? How? I don't have any real problems with battery life yet, but I'm not aware that it can be replaced when it eventually reaches end of life.

        Referring here only to the E-ink versions (Simple Touch and Glow), they did a lot of things right. Organizing your books is the weakest part, the book shelf implementation is really weak. The Kindle Paper White sounds like it's better hardware wise than the Glow, but not by a lot. My main issue with the Glow is the durability of the screen

    • Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:4, Informative)

      by robocord ( 15497 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:58PM (#44664921)

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      I have a Kindle Paperwhite and a Kobo Aura HD. I previously owned a Nook Simple Touch w/ Glowlight and a Kindle Touch. As far as I'm concerned, there are three areas where these devices compete: hardware, software, and synchronization services (we'll call this "platform"). Libraries are largely the same, though Kobo is often a bit more expensive than Amazon and doesn't have as much of the self-published stuff.

      (All ratings are for dedicated eReaders).

      Hardware
      1. Nook
      2. Kobo
      3. Kindle

      The Nook simply feels the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by aheath ( 628369 ) *
        I had a Nook Simple Touch which was gathering dust. I gave the Nook to a friend and bought a Kobo Aura HD. I like the Kobo hardware. I also like supporting my local independent bookstore when I buy books for my Kobo. Wireless syncing can be slow if the wireless signal quality is poor. I use a USB cable to charge the Kobo from my MacBook. I always sync when I charge the Kobo. The Kobo does have a social media tie ins to Facebook that I haven't used the social media features because I don't use Facebook. The

    • Re:What is it about the Nook? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @03:18PM (#44665263) Homepage
      My primary motivation for buying a Nook instead of a Kindle was my interest in supporting competition for the 8000-ton gorilla that is Amazon. Consumers benefit when there are at least two comparable options to choose from. Also, as a long-standing bookseller with experience dealing with calls for censorship, B&N has also been less prone to kneejerk removal of books, and (as far as I've heard) they haven't been caught purging their ebook catalog of fiction that touches on controversial themes. (Which is an example of why competition is needed.)

      I replaced my Nook with the latest model when the original one was damaged because I'd found that it was also just a plain good device. I especially like the big page-turning buttons, which make it easy to operate while running on the treadmill at the gym.

  • The Nook is a good example (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24, 2013 @12:29PM (#44664397)

    of a company proactively doing the right thing, embracing technology at the risk of cannibalizing its own products by redefining their business as something larger than selling books. They implemented the technology the right way, or at least have received awards and top scores from magazines such as Consumer Reports, set a reasonable price (easily within the budget of a large proportion of existing customers), and marketed it aggressively - the Nook is front and center in many of the B&N stores I go to.

    And it still hasn't worked out for them.

    So the next time you hear some MBA smarties belittling CEOs of flailing companies for not having the vision to go beyond what made them successful in the past, remember the Nook. It's not as easy as these pundits make it sound.

    • Re:The Nook is a good example (Score:5, Informative)

      by amiga3D ( 567632 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @12:42PM (#44664461)

      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: (Score:3)

        by alen ( 225700 )

        yep, i never saw the difference between the two and yet for some reason amazon's seemed cooler if you believed the internet

        its like movietickets.com vs fandango a decade ago. both were the same but fandango won the cool war. the winner probably hired people to post crap on the internet about how much cooler they were to get the first adopter market

    • Re:The Nook is a good example (Score:5, Informative)

      by TerminaMorte ( 729622 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:25PM (#44664715) Homepage
      Part of the problem is that if you want to buy the books through B&N, the digital copy is generally the same price as a physical copy. They were expecting to make their money by selling ebooks, but were not willing/able to price them competitively.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Another example would be Kodak who leapt on digital photography very early on, and haven't really been able to reap the rewards, due in part to the fact technologies they pioneered ended up being sold as part of more universal widgets (like cameraphones.)

        But due mostly to the fact that Kodak's digital cameras were shit. They were often moderately acceptable cameras until you got to the interface which always made you want to break things, beginning with the camera.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Another example would be Kodak who leapt on digital photography very early on, and haven't really been able to reap the rewards, due in part to the fact technologies they pioneered ended up being sold as part of more universal widgets (like cameraphones.)

        Kodak invented the digital camera. They didn't reap the rewards because they didn't want to cannibalize existing sales.

        One has to remember that Kodak sells chemicals (solid(as film), and liquid(for processing film and paper prints)). Digital photography do

  • I love my Nook. Pleeease keep the form factor and size the exact same in future models so I can keep using my nifty Oberon cover. A couple of other suggestions, really amp up the contrast so it looks like paper, and let me read more than one book at once. That would about do it, everything else is perfect.

    • How do you read more than one book at once?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Usually it's a Text book + Reference book. Or two cook books.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by nurb432 ( 527695 )

        Well, most of us have 2 eyes...

    • What's the problem with reading more than one book at a time? I do it sometime, putting a book aside to read something else. It's still got my place when I get back.

      I don't get two "go back to reading your book" buttons, but that doesn't look critical.

  • Great to hear! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nooks are great. And I really want B&N to survive since they have shown they can think out of the box.

  • Nook owner for several versions (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    My family and I have several Nooks over the years, and they have been great. I've never owned or tried a Kindle, so I can't speak to any performance comparisons, but it has everything we want in an eReader:

    • Screen and font layouts are simple and adjustable, so my wife (who has migraines) can have a migraine-friendly setting while she waits out the pain.
    • The account synchronization between devices "just works"* so we can buy books and read on various devices, fairly transparently.
    • Battery life has improved ov

  • Great deal on HD+! (Score:3)

    by kimanaw ( 795600 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @12:53PM (#44664517)
    I picked up the deep discounted HD+ last weekend. Pretty awesome deal - $179 for a 9" 32G ($149 for the 16G version if you can find them) tablet w/ 1920x1080 screen. No camera, no microUSB, no uHDMI out...but does have GPS, a uSD slot, and can sideload real Android, and purportedly Ubuntu. Wifi seems pretty solid, and the screen is very crisp. Biggest downside is the old/slow CPU - things can get a bit laggy - but for what I use it for (books, email, web surfing) its a helluva deal. A few apps I've tried to load from the playstore won't install, but nothing thats a deal breaker. I've had an iPad, an overpriced POS from Toshiba, and lately a 7" Tab 2 thats very flaky; the Nook HD+ beats them all either on readability, stability, or price.

    Alas I don't know if BN can turn the business side around without stripping the Nook down to a basic B&W reader, and locking folks down to the BN store.
    • I picked an HD+ 32GB up on sale as well and my experience has been much the same; I still prefer my Nexus 7 for most conventional tablet activities, but the Nook HD+ is an excellent reading device and honestly does almost everything just as well; I have gotten very used to the larger screen, and it's hard to go back to the smaller size tablets for reading after adjusting to the HD+. On the app side, I will say this though: the Kindle App is smoother and more efficient than the Nook app, with a few more fea

  • I have seen their website crash a page several times. And I should not have to login again to be in the nook section.
    And their content hierarchy could be better so that finding stuff is easier. They need more sub-genre support.
    Trying to display cover-art on e-ink displays makes little sense to me. We didnt buy e-ink for the pictures, so give
    us content that is text. And do it fast and rich.
    Make the e-ink books better at navigating your content and you will sell more content.

  • batteries lost my trust (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hort_wort ( 1401963 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @01:03PM (#44664575)

    Even if the "nook is back", I wouldn't purchase another.

    I debated between that and the Kindle years ago. I finally decided on the nook after reading that it had double the battery life. Ha! I turned off every wireless connection it had and the thing still wouldn't last more than a few days before begging to be recharged. This fell drastically short of their claims. There are many threads about this problem out there, I only wish I had searched for them before my purchase.

    • they both lost me when nexus 7 came around. granted no hdmi or sd slot but its a pure android device.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Threni ( 635302 )

        I got the nook because it's the same price as the 7 but with a bigger screen and better build quality. I don't care about which version of android it's got as long as it's not ancient. V4 is good enough for me.

  • on my Nook. And I couldn't be happier. Unless of course the world moved away from its addiction to flash.

  • There should be more out there then the kindle.

    I actually like the nook better for a couple reasons. Its just two bad that B&N is so small compared to the monster Amazon has become.

  • Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader line has largerly [sic] been regarded as a botched attempt to compete with the Kindle

    Citation needed.

  • I owned the original Nook with the small lcd screen along the bottom and the newer simple touch nook. I'm a tall guy with larger hands and the original nook was a good fit for me but I like the simple touch for the weight of it. As far as compelling differences between the Kindle and Nook line up - I don't see a huge difference besides compatibility with different formats. It seems like the Nook has better open standard support. This can be alleviated by using a program like Calibre to convert the books htt [calibre-ebook.com]

  • lrn2english (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "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."

    The Kindle's failure has contributed to the bookseller's financial woes? I don't think so. Learn to English, kthx

  • nook Tale of woe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Peet42 ( 904274 ) <Peet42 AT Netscape DOT net> on Saturday August 24, 2013 @02:16PM (#44665005)
    I bought a nook Simple Touch for my Mother's birthday. It seemed like a good deal (reduced from £80 to £30 for "London Literacy Week") and there were numerous books listed in the "free content" from the 1800s that had been published right next to where she lived that would be of interest to her in her Genealogy hobby.

    From the start I was annoyed by it - you couldn't activate it to use in any way without first associating it both with a working Credit Card and an active email address. As it was going to be a surprise I had to go to the trouble of setting up a separate email address just so she wouldn't be tipped off by the (non-optional) "purchase notifications" it sent to that address every time you added a book.

    Then, there were the restrictions. 80% of the storage was reserved for DRM'd material - if you downloaded restriction-free files from Gutenberg or similar you could only fill 20% of the provided storage. Oh, and remember all those "free" books I researched before buying it? *Every one* on the US site refused to download saying that "For copyright reasons this content is restricted to US downloads only". Even though I was in Scotland, and the books were published in Scotland, *in the 1800s*...

    Oh, and the clunky DRM support requires you to run a piece of third-party (Adobe) software to "authenticate" the device that's not available in any form under Linux. I ended up having to download and install a pirate copy of Windows just to be able to initialise the machine! (I feel so *dirty*...)

    There turned out to be a much smaller selection available on the UK site. Of those, maybe one in six would fail to download and crash the machine. Barnes and Noble "fixed" this by deleting the files remotely, and proudly emailed to say the problem had been "resolved". Er, no. "Resolved" would have been for the books to be in a condition to be read on the device that was purchased to read them - anything else doesn't qualify as a "resolution".

    The device itself died three weeks into setting it up, and it took the best part of *two months* to get a replacement. (From their factory in Poland...) Which was dead on arrival. At least the next replacement took less than a week. And then I had to set about loading all the books from scratch.

    Oh, and the "local number" telephone support was a very faint woman with a Canadian-sounding accent over a bad VoIP link with a 2-3 second delay. But you don't need to worry about that any more, as since I had all these problems they've withdrawn the support number entirely and now you are forced to use "Live Chat" on the wensite during the hours of 9am-6pm. *Their* time zone. Which translates to 5pm-2am where I live.

    So, now it works. Except that as my Mother doesn't have a Credit Card I've had to leave it registered with mine. And something like 80% of the "Front Page" you get when you turn it on is something that will lead to you spending money if you click on it. I've had to simply scramble the wi-fi settings so it can't communicate to purchase *anything*. If they'd been a bit more subtle about it I might have left her with the option of buying new books, but as things stand their money-grabbing philosophy has backfired.

    Sorry this is such a long rant. The really annoying thing, above all else, is that when it works it works really well - the touch screen is extremely responsive, the battery life is good and if they didn't screw you with the hellishly intrusive DRM I would have been happy to pay two to three times as much for the hardware.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I bought a nook simple touch during one of my visits in USA. I did create a user in the BN web store (and you don't need a credit card, you could use a gift card). And I routinely upload on the device epub books I download from internet without problems (I use Calibre both for managing my library, for converting and for uploading). I also buy books on the BN web store and download them on the device (and on the app I have on my smartphone). And every friday they give away an ebook (they call it "free friday

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Peet42 ( 904274 )

        it is enough to put a SD card in it to have all the space you want for your books and documents

        True. Of course it would mean spending the cost of the machine again to get the extra space that was originally advertised. (Assuming around £30 for a 32GB micro-SD)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gogo0 ( 877020 )
      the regional lockout thing is terrible. i was not allowed to buy an Economist subscription in japan on my nook tablet, so what were my options? ended up rooting the thing and installing a custom ROM running vanilla android.
      i love it, only use it for watching NFL games, reading books (Moon+ Reader), and reading comics (Perfect Viewer). of course, i can now also download Economist epubs and read them that way, despite the fact that they wont accept my money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aheath ( 628369 ) *
      I've often wonder why Barnes & Noble decided to develop their own eReader hardware. Borders took a different path and sold the Kobo. Borders didn't survive for other reasons but I thought it was a smart move to avoid going head to head with Amazon for eReader sales.
    • There are three nooks in my house, and I find very little to agree with you.

      Then, there were the restrictions. 80% of the storage was reserved for DRM'd material - if you downloaded restriction-free files from Gutenberg or similar you could only fill 20% of the provided storage. Oh, and remember all those "free" books I researched before buying it? *Every one* on the US site refused to download saying that "For copyright reasons this content is restricted to US downloads only". Even though I was in Scotland, and the books were published in Scotland, *in the 1800s*...

      Ebooks take up so little space, that I've found that isn't a problem. It might be different if I wanted to store movies on our various nooks (a simple touch, a nook color, and a nook tablet) but having books hasn't been a problem yet.

      Oh, and the clunky DRM support requires you to run a piece of third-party (Adobe) software to "authenticate" the device that's not available in any form under Linux. I ended up having to download and install a pirate copy of Windows just to be able to initialise the machine! (I feel so *dirty*...)

      HUH?!? I don't have any windows machines in my house, and I have no problems with any of our nooks. This doesn't match up with my experience at all. I connect the nook to my linux computer with the ca

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Peet42 ( 904274 )

        HUH?!? I don't have any windows machines in my house, and I have no problems with any of our nooks. This doesn't match up with my experience at all. I connect the nook to my linux computer with the cable provided, and load whichever epub files I want.

        I was specifically trying to download DRM-laden files from the B&N store that I couldn't find from alternative sources such as Gutenberg. (e.g. a book of all the names on the gravestones in Banff graveyard published sometime around 1860...) It was the

    • You can hack the NST. So, that's what you do. Suddenly you can change out the PDF reader, access the market, all that jazz.

      Next time, visit XDA-Developers before calling support.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Peet42 ( 904274 )

        Next time, visit XDA-Developers before calling support.

        If you read some of the other responses upthread before posting, you'll see that while I would be happy to do that if I was using it myself, as a gift for my 87-yesr old Mother I had to leave it unhacked in case she ever sent it back directly for servicing under warranty.

        • Why can't you do that for her? You've already handled all the other aspects.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Peet42 ( 904274 )
            Because I needed the device to be "stock", so if she took it into her head to return it to B&N under warranty without consulting me first they wouldn't distress her by refusing to service it. (She lives a long way away from me, and I'm housebound with no transport of my own, so once it's in the post that's the last I'll see of it...)

  • B&N (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WilyCoder ( 736280 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @02:22PM (#44665017)

    B&N has been Ballmer'd

  • Barnes and Noble has a policy where they only sell to Americans. It's unbelievably stupid. I've spent literally thousands of dollars on ebooks in the last few years on Amazon.com. During that time, I've tried on 2 separate occasions buying something from B&N, with no success. I even tried purchasing a gift certificate credit, but when I tried using it for an ebook, they didn't accept it. That's why Amazon.com has and always will beat the crap out of B&N IMO.
    • Brazil is one of the toughest places to import products. Amazon certainly has an advantage as a larger company which has always been based on the internet, and so has probably been dealing with international trade for a while. Barnes & Noble, being a brick and mortar business expanding into internet trade, hasn't dealt with international crap as much and might not see enough advantage to playing by Brazil's trade rules since it would only be for its apparently not that successful e-book business.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alejux ( 2800513 )
        It's not a Brazil issue. All other countries are also banned from buying ebooks on B&N. While in Amazon all you need is an international credit card, with B&N, you need one with a billing address within the US. There are no importation taxes or any trade inter-country trade bureaucracy when buying downloaded stuff from Amazon, just like there are none with most digital content you find on the web.

        • its not the company "banning" people from sales. I mean, it would be absolutely ridiculous for a company to limit their market share.

          I live in Canada and know all too well how frustrating it is that I can't buy something online from some store because the Canadian government will not allow the company into Canada until they can set up all their taxes and tariffs and ensure that Canadian culture is respected and, yada yada yada. Then, of course, the Canadian government has to kneel and pray to the big thre

  • You know when a CEO insists that the company is committed to the product line that it's only a matter of time until they're gone.

    Once they dump as many of the readers that are in the pipeline as possible, they'll drop the Nook faster than Anthony Weiner drops his pants.

  • I have a 7 and 10 inch tablets. Both are Androids and both have the Kindle and Nook apps on them. I buy different books for different reasons for the two platforms. There seem to be fewer and fewer Kindles and Nooks in the wild. Most people doing what I am doing and reading on mobile devices. I actually lent a Nook eBook to a colleague at work. However, according to the pundits, eBook sales are 'faltering'. I just Googled "ebook sales 2013".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by asavage ( 548758 )
      It is so much nicer to read off e-ink screens than tablets, especially when outside. The battery life also makes e-readers great for traveling as they get much better battery life. When I see people reading on a electronic device in public it is almost always an e-reader over a tablet. Sales might be down but there is no reason for most e-reader owners to buy new devices as a new e-reader isn't noticeably better than one bought 4 years ago. A 4 year old tablet is much worse than a 2013 Nexus 7.

  • A while back, my little sister picked up a Nook Tablet for, what was it? Like $170? Back in May I picked up a 7" Android 4.0 tablet from China that kicks its ass for $30. (In fact, I bought four different ones, and one of those 'Android TV stick' devices, for a total of $145, god bless DealExtreme.) [giantpachi...ofdoom.com]

    Just pull the plug, B&N. Concentrate on content distribution, and maintaining the reader app. I think in the long run, the Nook is nothing more than an unnecessary expenditure that exposes them to equally

  • i rooted my nook color and installed the kindle app on it.

  • Nook Owner Here (Score:3)

    by JackSpratts ( 660957 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @04:51PM (#44665737) Homepage
    Bought the Tablet the week of release and paid around $250.00 w/handsome flip cover. It's fits in my suit pocket so it actually goes to meetings. Great screen - easy to read, displays AV content pleasingly (charts, pics, NetFlix etc), good sound. Has page numbers! With format-shifting Calibre I can load any content out there and the expandable memory let's me add all I need. Mine's nearly two years old so the idea of "doing it again" is basically moot. Technology marches etc...I'd buy something up to the 2013 minute now, like the new Nexus 7 with faster page loading maybe, but I have no need to replace my Nook. It's still doing what I paid it to do in '11. It's bulletproof. Battery holding up...It's a real GLU, a great little unit.
    • I have almost exactly the same experience. I own a nook color

      My oldest son has a nook tablet, and he complains that there aren't any free-to-play games on it.

      My younger son has a nexus 7. The reader apps all fall short of the nook. But the nook app (as far as I can tell) for generic android devices only works for books bought from B&N.

      In general our consensus is that the nook is the better reader, but the nexus is more versatile.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        I use FBReader and Amazons's Kindle App. With FBReader, I use ivona TTS and the TTS reader plugin and listen to books.

        The Kindle App can read any book in mobi format, DRM or not. Calibre works well for this.

        What problems do you have with those two apps?

        • FBReader is ok. I like the nook one better-- on an actual nook it can be used to read both free and paid content, but the app from google play doesn't seem to be able to do this. Never tried the kindle app, because I assumed it would work the same as the nook one. I'll probably give it a look. OTOH, all of my books are in epub, which makes for a lot of converting.

  • Books are primarily going to be sold for eReaders. They don't so much need "the nook" as much as they need an eReader. Applications for a competitor's hardware is known to be destined for failure when you compete with companies that do not play fair, U.S. v. M.S. [wikipedia.org]. My money says selling books that will be read by someone else's software on someone else's hardware will always be less profitable than selling real books.

  • Competition is good.

    On a personal note i prefer the simple touch nook over kindle due to native ePub support. And the hardware just 'feels' better. ( yes, that's an abstract opinion )

    Now, if they can come out with color.. And get rid of the gloworm version of the simple touch..

  • Color e-ink! (Score:3)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday August 24, 2013 @06:18PM (#44666093) Homepage Journal

    Hey, if you are listening.. 9.5" color e-ink please..

    Come out with one of them, ill buy 2 more simple touches as a thanks..

    • I would love to have a Kindle DX - the only big screen ereader that comes to mind.

      I've got lots of PDF documents, mostly manuals for work but some other things also. My 7" Nook and Kindle are great for reading flowing text, but for PDF's that bigger screen makes a difference.

      And yeah, color eInk would be great even if it was crappy 16 color. I've got V for Vendetta and Watchmen as ebooks and wouldn't mind even 16 color for those, 256 would be better of course.

    • Count me in. A 9.5" color e-ink reader is something I have fond dreams about.

  • I have both a G3 Kindle (Kindle Keyboard) and a Nook Simple Touch.

    My Nook Simple Touch is more versatile right off the bat since it does ePub and can support Adobe's DRM. First thing I did to the thing was root it [livejournal.com]. It was great rooted, I could access my entire Kindle library save for the one audio book, and I was even able to make the page turn buttons work for it. With the limitation that the buttons worked for Kindle or Nook books but not both at the same time (grumble grumble). I was also able to get

  • ...but I think the biggest problem with the Nook and Barnes & Nobel going forward is not the Nook hardware (widely acclaimed, see above) or the selection of books, (especially considering that you're not limited to B&N content) or even the Android platform options and marketplace options that B&N has elected through the years.

    The problem that the Nook has at this time, and going forward is the Investment that Microsoft made in B&N. As that is the factor that has essentially destroyed Nokia a

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Close