When I first heard about the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader back in early-November, I immediately went online to www.bn.com, and placed a pre-order for a unit. In the past, I had refrained from purchasing an Amazon Kindle, because it was a first-generation product, and it seemed to have some limitations. According to the preliminary marketing and advertising for B&N's Nook, many of those limitations were overcome...at least in the ads.About a week ago, I finally received my Nook eBook reader, which is priced at $259.00 (plus $39.00 for the case). As an avid reader, and someone who is constantly traveling, I looked forward to having one device on which I could store a handful of books to read on airplanes and when traveling. Admittedly, my expectations for this device were high.
Does the Nook work? Well, yes. The programming has some bugs, but basically it works. You can download eBooks, and then read them on the Nook's display. However, the unit itself is very slow. It takes several minutes to boot up once it's turned on, and loading books from memory, and then turning digital pages as you read is also very slow (almost to the point of being frustrating).
The battery life is also much shorter than B&N advertises, and the overall design of the unit has its own set of minor problems. For example, the unit's weight is off-balance, based on the way someone would hold it in their hand while reading. And, that cool looking, full-color, touch screen at the bottom is over-sensitive. When the menu screen is on, many of the menu options are counter-intuitive. Plus, when the lower screen is off (when you're actually reading), it appears black. Thus, if you're actually reading using light from an overhead lamp, it causes a pretty major glare and reflection which is distracting. Plus, the touch screen gets finger prints on it that also causes a glare when the light hits it. I find myself wiping off the lower touch screen several times during each reading session.
In my opinion (as someone who loves using all of the latest gadgets, and who is literally hooked on my iPhone and iPod Nano, for example), I have to admit that the B&N Nook has not lived up to expectations at all. Yes, it works. But, the overall unit design and more importantly, the programming and user interface, could have, and should have been much better designed.
My first big problem with the unit occurred when I tried to purchase, download and read the new Stephen King novel directly from the Nook. Nowhere did it say the book wasn't yet available. (As it turns out, the release date is on December 24th). Anyway, the Nook accepted my order for the book, and kept trying to download it. Because it was apparently a pre-order, the download would not work, but all I received as a generic error message stating that the unit could not connect to the network. After spending almost an hour on the phone with B&N's technical support people, they were able to tell me there's a bug in the Nook's programming and that they'd need to adjust my online account somehow before my Nook would again work properly.
So, while the concept of the Nook is great for frequent travelers, this first generation of the product still needs some fine-tuning. Unless they drop the price of the unit considerably, I strongly recommend holding off, and waiting for the next generation of eBook readers to become available. I understand Apple will be releasing some type of digital tablet device in early-2010, that'll allow people to read eBooks, plus it'll run iPhone apps on a larger screen and surf the net.
In terms of the Nook, I am also a bit disappointed with the selection of eBooks, as well as the digital versions of newspapers and popular magazines that are Nook compatible. Many of the most popular titles an avid reader would want aren't available (at least not yet). The initial ads for the Nook stated that dozens of major daily newspapers and magazines would be available in digital format upon the Nook's release. Well, it's been several weeks since the Nook was officially launched, but the selection of digital newspapers and magazines that's currently available is small and totally unimpressive.
Again, the Nook does work. However, with just a bit of extra work on the designers' part (and maybe if they tried a few focus groups with actual end users), the unit could have been so much better.
To sum this up, I don't hate the Nook, but I'm not overly impressed with it either. My expectations were not met, and in my opinion, the cost of the unit is too high. The $9.95 cost of most downloadable books, however, is very reasonable.
So, if you're considering the purchase of a Nook, I'd hold off, and see what comes out next year.
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