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).....

Arcade Unit is Finished at last!

I just got the computer stuffed inside of the arcade unit, all the controls work, wireless works, blinkies work, and I can finally play MAME! Still have lots of things to do in terms of final 'ui', stuff, I also blew out two of my ports on my usb hub when farting around trying to get the computer in the case. By away the hardest part of this project was getting the computer mounted in such a tight space. Next time I will use a SFF pc for sure! WHat a disaster. My hands are all cut up, I have bruises, and I am glad that the unit is 'inside'. Very serviceable, since I can just connect automagically via wireless to the unit and perform basic maintenance. I hope to not open it up for many years.....

Thomas

Mame arcade cabinet final controls soldered and ready for attaching!

Well, I finally have almost finished my arcade unit. The third / fourth player controls (actually 1 & 2) are soldiered, and tested, Ready for attaching. Kind of strange, since I started this whole mess in October.

Thomas

Reading PDFs on the Mac

Just a quick note. I have re-discovered the wonders of reading PDFs with a program called "TOFU" It makes all pdfs into a news story (e.g. columns etc). Very nice for reading quickly.

My arcade project is almost done, I am getting ready to do the final soldering. Gave a presentation at the local Linux Users Group, which was well received. Don't forget your Normal vga, though when giving presentations at Redhat world headquarters, since they only have 'old' style analog vga.

Oh well.

Thomas

Mozy added to my craplist

I tried using mozy after using their free service for nearly 2 months. I paid them $82.00 for a 2 year contract. Thus far things aren't going very well. The first time I tried to do a backup the system locked my out and thought that I was on more than 1 server when I wasn't. This happened twice.

Today WhenI tried to continue this I recieved another issue, this time with port 443 not being able to reach their server. I sent out two technical support requests with no avail.

I am getting ready to get rid of them via the wonderful power of a visa chargeback. Thus far I cannot recommend doing business with them due to their colossal incompetence.

I am tired of calling them every time their program bombs. Probably going to try spideroak.

Thomas

A tale of Customer Loyalty and why its good

I am one of those people who has the memory of an elephant. While I do believe in forgiving and forgetting (with people), I tend to be very harsh on companies that lie, cheat, or otherwise try to bamboozle me.

I am also especially generous when a company treats me right. If I have a company who I trust, and who loses perhaps a little bit of money on a transaction, I will stay with that company even if their prices are double their nearest dodgy competetor who has wronged me.

Case in point: Tom Tom vs. Garmin. I bought a tom-tom and the thing destroyed itself even before working. The firmware update process wrecked it, and I ended up returning it.

Garmin (I am going on my third garmin now) has pretty decent products, and occasionally has quality issues, but they make up for it. On my first garmin, I had trouble with the auto plug in adapter. They sent me 'free' ones even after the warranty expired (to the tune of about $40.00). So when my trusty street-pilot finally died (7 years!!!) I bought another garmin, the Zumo 550. The zumo recently bit the dust, and garmin STILL honored the warranty even though the device is > 1 year ownership. NO COST other than shipping the defective unit to them.

I will admit that I did have to go through about 3 hours of technical support hell, but ultimately when everything else failed, they gave me a warranty exchange.

So when I didn't want to do the 'cross' ship option (nearly .3 kilodollars) I went to tiger direct and bought, you guessed it, another garmin. So they have made money by honoring the warranty and made me a loyal customer again.

THomas

New Sun Recumbent (LWB)

I got a good deal on a Sun recumbent this weekend. I took it out for a 14 mile spin today. The LWB is really smooth, but takes some getting used to. High speed handling was excellent, the seat (I prefer mesh seats) is not too bad for a 'hard' seat. I will be experimenting with different seats, as well as different tires. I also like the simplicity of the chain drive, as well as 'default' components that aren't expensive to replace.

20 Inch tires are also nice, 20 tire choices vs 3. for the old 16's. I also like the shocks. VERY good, in fact better than my crane creek shock on the old satrday.

LWB is also easier to get up the stairs.