About three weeks ago I purchased a Barns and Noble Nook and I LOVE it. In answer to your’s and my mom’s first question, because its half the price of an iPad.
The background:
I found myself in an awkward situation. I did not want to buy any more physical books but the iPad (the obvious choice) was not yet where I wanted it.
I am against physical books for the following reasons: books are heavy, expensive, not searchable and can only be one place at a time.
On the other hand you have the iPad out there. Buts its a 1st gen device. Normally I would be all over a first gen device, being the early adopter that I am, but the iPad has some obvious upgrades coming. It will inevitably get the “retinal display” as well as a front facing camera.
Why the Nook?
Well to start it cheaper than the Kindle. Both devices are solid. The Nook has a wifi-only version that saves about $40 bucks. Where as the Kindle does not (Its new, really new). I also liked that I could go to a Barns and Noble store and play with one. I know, kinda ironic of me to say I want to buy in a bricks and mortar store and do away with physical books.
There is one other issue: DRM. The Kindle is a very closed platform. There is very little you can do with a Kindle other than read books from amazon. Because I am occasionally given large PDFs to read or books in PDF format, the Nooks compatibility features were very welcome.
have had this post in the queue for a while. Since I originally drafted it, Amazon came out with a new Kindle. Its has a newer generation of eink and is $10 cheaper. It looks like a seriously good device. DRM issues aside, it would be hard to go wrong with the Kindle.
User Interface
The Nook has a touch screen and I am against keys on portable devices. Sounds great until you use it. The Nook’s touch screen is nothing to write home about. Once you have played with an iPhone/iPad every other touch screen seems like garbage. Additionally, the first think I did was poke the etch-a-sketch… err… eink screen.
I could also tell you about the eink’s terrable refresh rate, but that would be missing the point (which I will talk about a bit later). Its an ereader. The only interface that should really matter is the page flipping buttons.
Again, you compare the Nook to an iPad and it looks bad but when you evaluate it for what it is, its a great little device.
Getting Up To Speed:
This was my first ereader so I was pretty much as dumb of a user as you can get. It was obvious that Barns and Noble had thought about the this. The Nook came loaded with a user manual, a humorous short article and a sample book. The total effect was a great walkthough of the device.
The Screen…
…Is always on. The typical on off does not really describe eink. Its more like the device wakes up, switches screens and goes back to sleep. Furthermore, for a black and white screen it can show so great images. As I mentioned earlier, the refresh rate blows, but thats not why you would use a device like this.
Conclusion:
I think the Nook is a great device. It would be hard to go wrong with a Nook or a Kindle. I think if I was reading textbook the Kindle DX would be killer but for occasional pastime reading and travel, the Nook is the winner for me.
