Curl Up with a Good NOOK
With Amazon's Kindle squarely in its sights, Barnes & Noble has at long last brought its own e-Book reader to market. Playfully named the Nook, Barnes & Noble's Android-powered device has much in common with its Amazon competitor but it also brings several game-changing features to the e-Reader product category.
Although the first wave of Nook shipments went out this week, you'll be hard pressed to get your hands on one before Christmas unless you pre-ordered online. However, ordering a Nook today at BN.com should get you one by mid-January, so it still makes for an exciting "gift card" of sorts this holiday season. Before you book your Nook, read on to see how it compares to Amazon's venerable Kindle. (Also, check out this Kindle comparison on BN.com.)
Kindle Schmindle
The Nook is very much a Kindle look-alike. Obviously the bottom touch screen is a major difference, but we'll get to that in a minute. The Nook's buttons are integrated within the eggshell plastic frame. They have a pleasant feel and there's a small plastic dot on each button to ensure proper finger placement. Unlike Kindle, the Nook thankfully has both the NEXT and PREVIOUS page buttons on both the left and right edges of the device. They don't always respond as quickly as one would like, but we'll get to performance in a few minutes.
The metal power button on the top edge of the device is somewhat annoying. It sits flush with the adjacent plastic and its slender profile and short-depth click make it sometimes difficult to know if a button push has registered.
Although the Nook is slightly narrower and shorter than the Kindle, it's a bit thicker and is heavier by about an ounce. My wife and I had no complaints with its size or heft but I imagine some will consider the added weight a negative. Personally, I think it's a wash and the physical differences between the Kindle and the Nook are negligible at best.
On the unit's backside lies two rather formidable advantages for the Nook over Kindle: a replaceable battery and a MicroSD slot. Anyone who has seen a Lithium-Ion battery gradually lose its ability to hold a charge will surely appreciate the ability to simply pop in a new battery. The expandable memory holds obvious advantages. Nook features 2GB of internal on-board memory (same as the Kindle), but the rear memory slot will accept either MicroSD or MicroSD HC, giving you virtually unlimited potential when it comes to storage capacity.
All the Pretty Colors
The most obvious difference between Nook and Kindle is the full-color touchscreen strip (for lack of a better word) which sits below the main screen. The main menu is simple and colorful and allows you to choose between "The Daily" (news, updates and daily subscription deliveries), "My Library," "Shop," "Reading Now" and "Settings."
They say that no good deed goes unpunished. In the case of Nook, the good deed is the bright and colorful touchscreen. Very cool, right? The punishment is reduced longevity between battery charges. Like the Kindle, the Nook's e-ink display is not drawing power once the "ink" is rearranged. However, using the touch screen, even in short bursts, will take its toll on your battery. Thankfully, the Nook does offer ways to maximize efficiency. You can turn Wireless off, reduce the touchscreen's brightness and also adjust how many seconds it stays lit after you remove your finger. The shortest interval is 10 seconds, but I'd like to see 5 seconds added as a choice.
One of the Kindle's chief drawbacks is the inability to lend a book to Kindle-owning friends and family. The Nook one-ups Amazon in this regard, with roughly half of its library available for lending. That said, the lending program is not without its caveats. Publishers must approve lending for a particular title and you can only lend a title once for 14 days to any one Nook-owning friend.
Just like a physical book lend, a Nook lend will remove that title from your library until it is returned. One could argue that 14 days isn't enough time and the selection of books you can lend isn't as robust as one would like, but when you compare it to Amazon's "No Lending" policy, I say it's a promising step in the right direction.
Why Wi-Fi?
Both the Nook and Kindle make use of AT&T's 3G cellular network for book buying and browsing. However, the NOOK takes things one step further as it's the first e-book reader to feature built-in 802.11b/g wireless and free Wi-Fi when you're inside one of Barnes & Noble's stores.
Free Wi-Fi inside the store sounds good on paper, but one has to wonder exactly how useful this will be, at least at the onset. Rumor has it that public Wi-Fi networks that feature a "welcome screen" - such as those you encounter in an airport - are not yet supported on the Nook.
One of the features that is currently missing from the Nook is a web browser - currently an "experimental" and unsupported (though functional) feature on the Kindle. If the Nook were to release a web browser, I could definitely see the "free Wi-Fi" feature getting more attention.
One Million Titles
One of the nice things about Nook is that it gives you access to more than 500,000 free e-Books that are considered out of copyright or in the public domain. These titles are the result of the Google Books effort to scan such titles and make them searchable and freely available to everyone. You can read more about this program at the Google Books website.
Of course, the flip side of that coin is that you need to re-evaluate B&N's claim of "one million titles" available for the Nook. In reality, less than half of those are modern works and recent bestsellers - you know, the stuff most people tend to read. Still, I'd much rather have access to those Google Books titles than not, and the fact remains that Kindle doesn't make them as easily accessible. (You can download .epub files from Google Books, but you'll then need to convert them to .pdf or .mobi using third party software such as Calibre. Only then can they be viewed on Kindle.)
Where's the NookStore?
One quick tip for B&N: book buying and book delivery needs to be a lot more intuitive on BN.com. My wife wanted to download Stephanie Meyer's Eclipse for her first Nook test. Unlike Amazon.com, which makes things crystal clear with their "Deliver to my Kindle" option, BN.com allows you buy an ebook, but it's not immediately evident how you get it to your Nook. My wife ended up buying it from the Nook directly to avoid her fear of "doing it wrong," and that's not something you want book buyers thinking when considering a purchase. Nook.com should bring you to The NookStore (how is B&N not calling it that??) where you can quickly and easily manage "My Nook" and purchase new titles.
OK, so the Nook has a few rather interesting bells and whistles not enjoyed by Amazon's Kindle. But how does it work? How does it feel? How does it react? In a word: slow. Now, before you stop reading and slump your shoulders in disappointment, let me say one thing. I firmly believe that Nook will get faster. And if I were a betting man, I'd wager that many of the Nook's performance-related issues will be ironed out before the unit becomes physically available in stores next month.
Opening a book on the Nook results in a 5-10 second delay while the main screen displays the word "Formatting." This can get annoying, especially if it's a book you've already accessed. The Kindle opens books much faster. Turning pages can also be sluggish, but when you're cruising along in a book, it's probably only an extra second per page when compared to Kindle.
Unfortunately, the speed and consistency issues are not limited to reading on the main screen. The Nook's bottom touchscreen has its own set of quirks, most notably a moody sensitivity to swipe and scroll motions. Simple button pushes (choosing a category from the main menu for example) work like a charm, but navigating the sub-menus and scrolling within the Settings area can sometimes be frustrating due to the Nook's occasionally lazy response time.
As I said above, the sluggishness that I observed with the Nook and its twitchy touchscreen response are issues I fully expect to see resolved. Consider Blackberry's Storm, Apple's iPhone or your average Blu-ray Disc player and I think you'll agree: firmware and software updates can be a beautiful thing. While it's unfortunate that these updates have become so commonplace, there is enormous power and flexibility that comes with a network-updateable device such as Nook. Response times can improve, bugs will vanish and new features suddenly appear. I have no doubt that Nook engineers will be working overtime this holiday season to address the aforementioned speed issues. With any luck, the Nook will soon be able to compete with Kindle in the speed department - which right now, it cannot.
Turn Offs
When Will Then Be Now?
Perhaps the single biggest asset in Nook's corner is the myriad opportunities for exclusive, in-store content delivery and hardware support at your local Barnes & Noble store. Although I'm sure it will roll out slowly, B&N - the nation's largest bookseller - would be foolish if they didn't create a "NookStore" section in every store, where Nooks can be demystified, purchased, software-upgraded and possibly even repaired. To avoid holiday craziness, I haven't been to a B&N store in several weeks. But I can already picture the "Ask me about NOOK!" buttons that are surely adorning every employee smock in the store. The physical in-your-face presence of Nook is one area where Amazon's Kindle just can't compete.
In closing, let me return to one very important word from my opening paragraph: Android. As some of you may know, Android is a Linux-based mobile operating system, viewed by many propeller-heads as the Next Big Thing. One of the big advantages to Nook using Android as its lifeblood is that it leaves open an enormous window of opportunity for future expansion. Android-based apps are already popular on devices such as Verizon's Droid cell phone, and I would be amazed if Barnes & Noble didn't set up a Nook "App Store," similar to what Apple offers for its iPhone customers.
Despite its performance quirks, the Nook stands as a unique and exciting new e-Book reader, rife with possibilities thanks to its Android platform and expandable memory. If its book-loading and page-turning times can be improved, the Nook will have my unreserved recommendation. And if you share my cautious optimism that the Nook will improve in the very near term, I don't see any harm in getting in line now and ordering yours today.
In Mel Brooks' underrated gem Spaceballs, President Skroob is told "We're at now, now." Disappointed and confused, his ultimate question is, "When will then be now?" With any luck: SOON.
Technical Specifications
What's in the Box?
Manufacturer Contact Information
Barnes & Noble, Inc.
P.O. Box 111
Lyndhurst, NJ 07071
Phone: 800-THE-BOOK
Web: BarnesAndNoble.com
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