Barnes & Noble nook Preview Discussion

[Jen Edwards]

The nook is the new electronic reading device from Barnes & Noble. It has a 6-inch e-ink screen, as well as a smaller, separate color touchscreen below, which is used for navigation, to view book covers, and as a virtual keyboard when necessary.

It sells for $260, but any new orders won't ship until January 15 at the earliest; there will not be any nooks available at retail until after the beginning of the year. Orders placed now will receive a "holiday certificate" you can give to the recipient if you are ordering it as a gift.

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with this e-book reader this morning. There has been a lot of mis-information floating around about the nook, so I'll do my best to hit some of the high points, answer a few burning questions, and clear up some confusion.

Read the full content of this Article: Barnes & Noble nook Preview

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[Mi An]

The receiver is not required to have an actual nook device; they can also download the free B&N eReader software for a variety of platforms, including iPhone/iPod Touch, BlackBerry, and PC/Mac computers.

Although those are the ones that have rebranded eReader software, I don't there's any real need to have Barnes and Noble's software to read books purchased from B&N. I tested one with eReader Pro software for my desktop, it prompted me to unlock it and it opened. Although I didn't test on Garnet or S60v3, or Android, my guess eReader on all platforms will read .pdbs from B&N.

It's not a huge surprise, but I was concerned that the Lending tech b&n is touting might add a layer of DRM that would require new software on each platform. Perhaps lent books aren't in eReader format at all, or at least, that extra layer of DRM doesn't attach to the original copy.

[Andrys]

I found it best to use a firm (not hard!) and deliberate touch, and after a couple of minutes I was navigating like a pro.

People will differ on that. Some even have recommended a very light touch.

(Strangely the nook does not support plain text documents, though I'm sure enterprising users will be able to get around that limitation in the future.)

That really IS strange. I regularly copy stuff off the web, put it into Word Doc so it looks very good and send it to my free Kindle receipt mail address (no charges) for conversion to Amazon format.

It is also important to note that you must manually update the content listing on the nook; it's a simple process that will add all files on the microSD card to the content listing on the device.

The Kindle 1 had some quirks with the SD cards in that people kept changing-out SD cards depending on genre etc. and it seems the Kindle would have to reindex things as 'there' now. These caused slowdowns and, sometimes, freezes.

Contrary to initial reports, you can lend a single ebook to multiple people in sequence; this is not a "once and done" feature as has been previously reported.

The User's Guide and the B&N forum administrators have been clear that it's done "once" only in the lifetime of a book.

HOWEVER, the forum discussions mentioned often that telephone support was telling people it was serial and therefore multiple. The admins said not, and they changed the FAQ to make that clearer.

I was not able to test any of the highlighting and annotation features, though from the way they are described on B&N.com it sounds like they will be largely similar to what is offered by the Amazon Kindle.

The process is different as is the coordination of LCD command to EInk display. The videos all show some lag time but many won't be bothered by it.

I think others' reviews show that not much can be assumed for the average customer or 'most' customers. Time will tell. I agree it's a nice looking device.

With the Kindle, you can highlight a word or phrase while reading a book (space-bar to end it and it pastes it into a searchbox) and then take your cursor to 'Wikipedia' or 'Google' to find out more about that, then press the Back button and be back where you were in your book.

If the Nook could do this for free 24/7, I think we would have seen a lot of exclaiming.

The text-to-speech, while not ideal, is a Kindle feature that's useful for continuing your 'reading' while on a commute or while cooking. No big deal but some find these two features unique and factors in choosing.

What I'd like Kindle to have is ePub reading so I don't have to do the automated conversion to MOBI with ePub files.

[Antoine Wright]

Very nice overview Jen; am looking at the nook pretty hard. But as a whole, ebooks just kind of need to be broken open a bit more.

[Andrys]

Jen,
Here's something more definitive for you re the LendMe program.

From their Terms of Use online at bit.ly/nooktou

(I am not allowed to post a URL, so it's shortened and not linked.)

In Item XII.

Only certain eBooks are eligible for lending. eBooks with an icon on their product pages indicate their eligibility for lending and will also have a "LendMe™" link in the customer's eBooks Library, once purchased.

Under the LendMe™ feature, a customer who has purchased an eBook on the Barnes & Noble.com Site may loan that eBook to only one person. Currently, the maximum number of times that an eBook can be lent is once per eBook title for a period of up to 14 days.

[Varjak]

Even if there's a one-hour limit to in-store 'browsing,' I can imagine plenty of people with close access to a B&N reading a book one hour a day during lunch hour or similar!

[dunkaroo]

Yeah, but does it work well when running Android apps?

[Andrys]

Even if there's a one-hour limit to in-store 'browsing,' I can imagine plenty of people with close access to a B&N reading a book one hour a day during lunch hour or similar!

It's my impression that we're limited to one hour on any specific specific book (and not browse that one again for another 24 hours), but that we can (as any physical book store patron can) browse for hours if you want.

That way they can attract people to the stores but also calm publishers' concerns. I think it's a good idea.

[Mi An]

Although those are the ones that have rebranded eReader software, I don't there's any real need to have Barnes and Noble's software to read books purchased from B&N. I tested one with eReader Pro software for my desktop, it prompted me to unlock it and it opened. Although I didn't test on Garnet or S60v3, or Android, my guess eReader on all platforms will read .pdbs from B&N.

Well, I was right as far as that went, you can read .pdbs from B&N on eReader, but apparently not all B&N's ebooks are .pdbs. I just downloaded a .epub.

At the moment, I see no way of distinguishing which is which before purchasing and downloading it.

[Varjak]

David Pogue SAVAGED the Nook in his Tmes review today.