This Kindle owner is psyched about the Nook
With all apologies to Sony and their long line of e-readers, I can now confidently point to some real competition to Amazon's Kindle.
Barnes & Noble's Nook is a beauty. It offers most of the amenities of my Kindle -- the easy-on-the-eyes e-ink screen, nearly instantaneous downloads of your favorite books and newspapers, in-text highlighting and plenty of space for scores of books -- with a few awesome additions, including a color touch screen menu, and the ability to lend books out to your friends for two weeks at a time.
(Sorry, but I couldn't include Kindle's text-to-speech function or Nook's screensaver as fantastic features. The talking Kindle has become nearly useless thanks to copyright issues, and the completely unappealling computer voice. Meanwhile, I really enjoy Kindle's screensavers of classic authors and printing presses! If I wanted to bother with creating screensavers, I'd be on my iPhone or laptop, thanks.)
I'm not convinced that Nook's Wi-Fi is all that exciting. Sure, you can browse books with their free Wi-Fi while in a Barnes & Noble, but ... can't you just pick up the physical book while you're in the store, as well? Of course, I'm willing to be proven wrong.
I'm also worried about those long buttons along the edges of the Nook that "turn" the pages for you. The original Kindle had similar keys, and they constantly made me lose my place in the book. I hope the Nook designers kept that in mind, and that these buttons aren't quite as easy to push.
But looking ahead, these new features (did I mention the lending aspect?!?) will only push Amazon to provide the same (and better!) services to their customers, or they'll lose out on the business. Let the innovating continue!
But there is one caveat: I am becoming concerned that the increasing number of devices out there -- and the nature of control the competing companies thus have over the digital rights to our ebooks -- will mean that people who back the wrong device will someday lose their ability to read the books they've bought.
Here's hoping that this doesn't become a VHS-Betamax-esque cage match.
While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, 
Comments
The Nook uses the ePub format which is an open format, and according to their announcement a slew of other e-readers are compatible with the BN ebooks that you purchase(sony, irex, etc).
With the kindle your book will only work on the kindle...period. For this reason alone the Nook is a Kindle killer. Nice try Amazon you almost had me.
Posted by: Ryan | October 21, 2009 12:07 PM
"I'm not convinced that Nook's Wi-Fi is all that exciting. Sure, you can browse books with their free Wi-Fi while in a Barnes & Noble, but ... can't you just pick up the physical book while you're in the store, as well?"
Of course you can pick up and read any physical book "that is in the store." With the WiFi, you can also "pick up and read" all those books that are not "physically" n the store too. 100,000's more books...
Posted by: G. Orwell | October 21, 2009 12:12 PM
I agree that the competition is definitely good for consumers. I still love the text-to-speech feature of the Kindle though. I don't buy any Kindle books which have that feature disabled. If my eyes are too tired to read, I simply let the Kindle read to me. Nice. The computerized voice doesn't bother me; I find it kind of relaxing.
I wrote a little spoof, "Nooks vs. Kindles: All-out War in U.S." for a British website. Here's the link: http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i61860
Posted by: Gail Farrelly | October 21, 2009 12:22 PM
The one advantage that electronic media has over physical media like videotape is that it is comparatively easy to convert formats. So if Amazon ever decides to stop supporting their own proprietary format (although it's probably more likely that future devices will simply be able to support all of the available formats), either they will be able to convert files themselves, or conversion programs will be created to do the work for individual owners.
Posted by: DJ | October 21, 2009 4:42 PM