Wednesday, June 2, 2010

In Other News

While I know people* love their Kindles, I'm intrigued by B&N's Nook. The Nook and the Kindle both have the same kind of display, display size, adjustable text size, etc.

What Nook has that Kindle doesn't is what makes me want a Nook instead of a Kindle (not that I'll get either any time soon because I just can't afford it)... Nook has Wi-fi, including free Wi-fi in B&N stores. It also has a new beta software pack to allow some web surfing.

Nook has a microSD slot, too, for more memory. B&N offers more ebooks in Nook's format than Amazon does in Kindle's, more than a million titles, so the memory expansion might actually be needed. Five hundred thousand of those titles are free, and you can read any ebook free while sitting in a B&N store... Up to an hour of reading time without buying the book per day.

Nook also offers the ability to lend your ebooks without lending your device, sharing the book between blackberries, pc's, and Apple devices. I think there's an imposed time limit, two weeks, IIRC, but still.

Hardware wise, Nook has a color touch screen below the reading screen for browsing your books, and you can browse your library by cover art through this screen. It also has a replaceable battery, which I like.

If I had a spare three hundred bucks laying around I'd buy the Nook. Unfortunately, I don't, so I'll just sit here and sigh at it, unless some generous reader wants to show their appreciation......

Anyone? Anyone? ....... Yeah, I didn't think so, but it was worth a shot.

*I'm looking at you, Alan and yes this post is mostly to make fun of you. Deal with it.

7 comments:

Alan said...

As long as the screen is easy on the eyes and it supports open formats then it doesn't matter what reader you get.

And although I have an iPad now, I still mostly use the Kindle for reading.

FarmGirl said...

Well, much as I would like to, I won't be getting any of them any time soon. Maybe the Fam will all go together and get me one for my birthday...

BUFF_dragon said...

Just get an iPhone.... my wife is already half-way through with MHV via Stanza on my iPhone (it was a fight to get it away from her this morning so I could go to work)
screen is nice enough, adjustable text, free app, and does MUCH more than a single-use device....
I even got to un-jailbreak my phone over the weekend since they finally allow video recording through the app store and my phone is running much smoother and faster

Eseell said...

You've got us Kindle lovers on a lot of those points, but the Kindle has free wi-fi everywhere that Sprint has 3G or EDGE coverage.

Old NFO said...

Nook is good... I picked up one, and am using it on my flights. I figure it will save me 4-500 bucks a year in book costs...

FarmGirl said...

The thing that would suck for me is that the whole fam pretty much shares books, and if I get a nook I'm not going to be able to just hand mom the new book... I'd have to hand her the device too, and I see myself not wanting to do that because my other books are on it...

And yeah I know it would probably pay for itself eventually, but I just don't have the cash on hand to spend on it... and I'm not likely to stop buying dead tree books to be able to afford it... I could go a month I guess, but then I'd have re-read everything, and I'd start twitching.

Teke said...

B&N has dropped the pricing on the nook and added a new version.

Wi-Fi only is $149
Wi-Fi and 3G version $199