Nook Review

With all of these idiot journalists publishing reviews of the Nook and not reading the manual I thought I would like to share some of my thoughts on the nook, now that I have owned it for 1 month.

The Good:

Epub- I can download free books from google, project gutenberg, and the internet archive, and put them on my memory card. Did I mention that the nook has a user replaceable battery, and accepts microsd (I wish it were sd!) cards up to 16gb??

Screen- So many of the reviewers are kind to the sony. The sony is EVIL. The screen made my eyes turn purple and fall out. Their use of resistive film in front of the eink display is STUPID. The screen on the nook is Beautiful, and in strong light is almost better than paper.

Page flipping- Contrary to the authors who don't read the manual, you CAN turn the pages on the nook with a gesture of quickly running your fingers across the DARKENED color touch display. If it is 'on' this gesture doesn't work.

Library Management- Calibre all the way. I don't have do deal with that closed sourced amazon crap that locks me into their propriatary formats. I do undertand that the amazon is capable of working like a usb drive, but has no memory expansion.....sadness. Calibre can also package news sites for consumption on your ereader for FREE....and its much better than the for pay stuff I saw on b&n sites.

Wifi- MUCH faster than at&t's crap network.......

Rootable- can do pandora, and browse calibre's book server, as well as do things like have a web browser (but with the awful screen keyboard, I wouldn't want to even try to internet on the thing...)

The bad:

Searching- the on screen keyboard is HORRID. Kind of like typing with all of your fingers cut off or trying to type with your toes. The search is a tad slow as well.

UI for 'my library' doesn’t scale much beyond 1000 books. There is no search feature within titles, and no way to easily navigate thousands of titles. Its kind of mitigated by calibre, since you just keep 'main' libarary on computer and download those books you want to read.

If B&N would just let me 'scroll' through the book covers like I do on the b&n library, and 'search' through titles, this problem would go away.

No backlight- I really don't think this is too bad, since normal books don't glow in the dark unless you use radioactive ink.

The non-standard usb almost thingy that plugs into the computer. Why could'nt they have used the 'standard' mini usb that everyone else is using? Replacing cable will be expensive. The connector is also hard to tell which way it fits due to its design. I always futz with it when I try to recharge the thing.

No cover-You charge me $270.00 for an ebook reader and don't include a cover? Its $30.00 for a decent nook cover. I found a nice place that makes really cool leather nook covers it is ttp://www.oberondesign.com/shop/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=1137 They make all kinds of cool covers for a little more. Much MUCH nicer than even the 150k ugly ones that b&n sells.

I have read 6 books on the thing now, and its nice getting books like classics for free, and current 'best seller's' instantly for $10.00. I still like library for fiction, since I raraly read fiction more than once. But for any 'classics' that I like to read again and again, nook rulez. Caliber + nook REALLY rulez.

The B&N drm isn't too onerous, just uses your cc# and name as the key for the book. Not too hard to remember, (unless you use virtual credit cards like I do).....