Tech Happy: Barnes and Noble Nook

Thanks to the generosity of my family, I received a Barnes & Noble nook for my birthday. A nook is an e-reader (perhaps you have heard of Amazon’s Kindle?), a sort of paperless book. Perhaps a better description is a paperless bookshelf, since the nook can hold thousands of books.

When I first started hearing about the Kindle I remember a vague feeling of “ooh, shiny,” but it wasn’t until I saw a Kindle owned by Paul’s aunt that I started wanting one of my own. Then, when the nook debuted with its awesome trifecta of WiFi, the LendMe feature, and support for the epub format, I knew I had found my e-reader.

I’ve had my nook for about 10 weeks, and I would describe it as half-baked, but still yummy.



The Awesome
I think e-readers are made for people like me. I tend to read four books at a time and take all of them on a weekend trip even when I don’t know if I’ll have any reading time. I tend to be compulsive, deciding that I need this or that book RIGHT NOW. So a device that allows me to store thousands of books in my purse and enables me to add to that collection within seconds sounds pretty perfect.

One of my favorite features on the nook is the fact that it supports the epub format and can also read PDFs. Practically speaking, this means I can borrow books from my public library’s ebook collection. The PDF support also means that I can create my own PDFs and “sideload” them to the nook, although so far I have had formatting issues when attempting this.

The epub/PDF support also means that the nook can read Google Book files. Google has been busy scanning and uploading thousands of public domain books to their servers, and now I can access them all from my nook.  It’s also worth noting that epub support means I don’t have to buy books from Barnes & Noble…I can purchase from Kobo or fictionwise or any other ebook store that sells epub. However, generally I want to stick with B&N because…..

…books I buy from Barnes & Noble can be lent to friends with nooks! Not every book I purchase from B&N can be lent, but quite a few of them can. I can send a book to a friend’s nook for up to two weeks, and when they are done they send it right back to my device. Even better, I can also lend books to friends with the nook application on their computers or smartphones. Kudos to Barnes & Noble for adding this bit of freedom to the ebook format.

I love that the nook can work over WiFi, which means that I don’t need to worry about cell coverage when I need to shop for a book. It has 3G through AT&T as well, but I like not being dependent on it. (The paranoid part of me is worried the wireless providers will get tired of providing the bandwidth someday.)

The Meh

Unlike the Kindle, the nook does not have an internet browser. (Apparently the Kindle has a limited browser that focuses on Wikipedia, but I haven’t played with it.) Personally, I don’t miss that feature on the nook, although I do occasionally wish I could tweet about something I’m reading without changing devices. Honestly, I think it’s good for me that the nook doesn’t have a browser; I’m able to focus on the book rather than flit from task to task. However, since the nook is based on Android, it would be fairly simple for B&N to add that feature at a future point (I’ve heard that someone already hacked the nook to add Pandora to it.)

LendMe gets a few sentences under the “Meh” heading because, while I can lend ebooks to friends, I can only lend each ebook once. Not once to each person, just once period. So if I lend a book to my mother-in-law, I can’t lend the same book to my sister-in-law a few weeks later. That’s very strange.

While the book selection for nook is excellent, the periodical options are quite limited. Like, limited to 30 newspapers and magazines total. Barnes & Noble is hoping to expand this soon, but for now I’m fairly disappointed with the meager selection. My bedside table is stacked with about 10 magazines waiting to be read, and I would love to move that entire collection to my nook. Maybe someday….alas….(Real Simple, I’m looking at you….)

The Unfortunate

Barnes and Noble seems to have released their device before everything was truly ready for the mass market. It’s a great device,  but some of the most highly touted features don’t work. For instance, a huge part of the buzz around the nook has been the ability to browse through any ebook while inside a Barnes and Noble store (the idea being that if you are someone who spends your Saturdays in the store sampling book, you can still do that with your nook). However, nook owners are still awaiting this feature, which has been “Coming Soon!” since October. The skeptic in me is wondering if B&N promised something that their technology simply can’t handle.

Another unfinished feature seems to be the More in Store option. At my local stores, I can view the free content available to nook owners, but I can’t actually download it (I get a network error message). Apparently certain B&N stores have this feature set up incorrectly, resulting in a frustrating experience for many hopeful nook owners. I did finally get the More in Store feature to work when I was visiting a Barnes & Noble in a different state. 

Overall, though, I am very happy with my nook. No, it’s not the same as a trusty vintage hardback detective novel or a freshly published paperback (ah……the smell of the ink….), but there’s a good bit of room in my heart for this new format.