My dog actually got the first glance at my nook. When it arrived, I was at a party and I received this picture from my husband. He had already broken into his and was playing with it by the time I got home. So much for Christmas present.
First Impressions
When I got my nook, the first thought that came to my mind is "pretty." nook is that, it is a pretty piece of hardware. The touchscreen is nice and bright, almost too bright sometimes, but that can be adjusted, the black bezel around the e-ink screen is sharp, and the buttons for turning pages are crisp. The photo below compares the Kindles and nook, with nook on the left, Kindle 2 in the middle, and original Kindle on the right. nook just looks more polished and next-gen, while the Kindle 2 looks outdated. The original Kindle just looks kind of square and odd.
Once I turned on my nook, I immediately noticed an intense slowness, so bad that it was nearly unbearable. However, I plowed through it, because I had just opened up a $269 piece of hardware that I could have sold on e-bay at the time for nearly double, and I was going to use it if it killed me. I was paying my early adopter tax dearly. The page turns were slower than the original Kindle, actually, nearly everything about it was slower than the original Kindle, even the book downloading felt sluggish and nook is supposed to be on 3G! I used it, though, and my husband purchased a steampunk novel titled Boneshaker, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed. We suffered through daily crashes and often wondered if our nooks would turn on the next day. Suffice it to say, we have had our shares of battery removals and hard reboots. I had to reboot the device to connect it to my MacBook to put a PDF document on it, but when I finally got it on there, it looked great.
About a week-and-a-half later, Barnes & Noble pushed through an update and I have to say that it is much better. Everything loads faster, it moves quicker, there are less button presses to get to what you want to read, and even the coverflow moves smoother. Pages turn faster and there's less formatting. It's like a whole new device. It is now faster than the original Kindle, and though I am not sure about the Kindle 2, I'm sure that it's catching up. The update process went smoothly for my husband and I, and since then, we have not had any crashes. There will probably be a few more updates over the next few months, and they can only improve things.
Comparisons, nook vs. Kindle
I would have to say that I like my nook better than I liked the original Kindle. I also like that my husband and I both have nooks, whereas he did not have a Kindle. We both have our nooks attached to his account, and any books that either of us download show up on both nooks. Pages do not sync between nooks, so we can keep our own spots in our separate nooks.
Having used the original Kindle and nook extensively now, here are a few things I have noticed:
Deleting Content
There is no way to just delete content from your nook. With the Kindle, it was very easy to manage content just by selecting content manager and then checking off what you wanted to keep and what you wanted to delete. If you purchased it, it was automatically backed up on Amazon's website and you could always get it again. With nook, any content that you download, even samples, have to be deleted from Barnes & Noble's website. Yes, strange, especially for people who may be using nook but do not have computers or internet access.
Locations vs. Page Numbers
The Kindle uses locations rather than page numbers, that way, you can resize the font to super-huge or tiny, and rather than making the book have more or less pages, you just remember a location number given to specific points throughout the book. With nook, however, you get page numbers. Sometimes you turn a page and it gives you the same number. Sometimes, you turn a page and the page is only half-full, but when you turn it again, it's not the end of the chapter. The breaks can be confusing, but they are easily ignorable and you get used to them.
Covers
The covers for nook are pretty cool, I won't lie. I would never buy one of those $125 designer covers, though. That's just a waste, and I'm not into that stuff anyway. My husband got the Chesterton Quote Cover in black and I got the Alice Cover. We both like our covers and they fit and protect our nooks quite well, and they were reasonably priced. They're also a lot more secure than the cover was for my original Kindle. The original Kindle always fell out of the cover, or the battery cover would come off all the time. Quite annoying. There's a bit of glare in the picture below, but the Alice Cover is on the left, Kindle 2 cover in the middle, and original Kindle cover on the right.
Lending Books
Haven't tried it yet, no one I know has a nook or wants to read on their computer or iPhone.
Music Player
I have loaded some MP3s onto my nook and played some music. It is more of a fun thing, since I have an iPhone for music, but it does work and it works well. The Kindle's music player worked just as well, but in order to change tracks or pause and play, there was a lot more button pressing involved.
Expandable Memory
I slid a 4GB card into the microSD slot on my nook (bought on black Friday for $10, normally about twice as much). It's kind of a pain to change the card out, because you have to take off the back cover, but once you get it in there, you really don't have to take it out much. I'll probably be using that for music, pictures, or documents.
E-book Stores
So far, I have had mixed feelings for Barnes & Noble's e-book store. There are a few books that I want to read that Amazon has on their store, but B&N does not. For example, the Lightning Thief. Amazon has it, I want to read it, but it is missing from B&N's store. As for the scanned books from Google, I have read several, and if you can get past the typos from the scans that are heavily peppered throughout the books, then they're great to have. I've read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for free, and my husband downloaded quite a few others. I also grabbed a Sherlock Holmes collection for free after watching the movie. I have a feeling that Barnes & Noble will make their e-book store better in the coming months, I'm sure people are complaining. I have heard that Barnes & Noble is going to revamp the store to compete with Amazon's e-book store in prices and content. As of right now, e-books from Barnes & Noble average to be slightly higher than their Amazon counterparts, which may change soon.
Reading Experience
As with all e-ink displays, the reading experience on nook is wonderful. Font sizes and types are easy to change, there is very little eye strain, and you can read forever. There is the ever-present screen flash when you turn pages, which is unavoidable right now, but you get used to it. Another big difference between Kindle and nook are the page turning buttons. The Kindle's buttons are quite easily pushed, and often accidentally pushed. It is easy to push nook's page turn buttons as well, but it seems that you have less accidents, especially when showing your nook to a friend. Especially with the original Kindle, it was nearly impossible to give someone your Kindle without the page being accidentally turned. You can also turn pages by swiping on the touchscreen, but the response is not as quick as pushing the buttons, and sometimes it does not register when you swipe. I use the buttons.
Battery Life
Battery life on nook is a lot less than the Kindle's. However, as with any device, if you leave it sitting around unplugged for a while, especially in standby mode, it will discharge. My husband left his unplugged for several days and when he came back to it, it was dead. The e-ink screen was still on, and when he plugged it in, he could not get it to respond for about thirty minutes after it had been plugged in. This is the only problem we have had since the update. Remember to keep that battery charged, and turn off the wi-fi and wireless internet if you don't plan to download anything. I charge mine every other night and don't have any issues. And if the battery wears out, it's a lot easier to change the battery in nook than in the Kindles that are out right now. You can also buy a replacement battery for travel, which is something I might pick up in the future.
Book Browsing
One of the touted features of nook is the ability to go into any Barnes & Noble store and be able to read through entire e-books while you are there. It is similar to the ability to be able to walk in, pick up a book off the shelf, and read it while sitting in a chair or on the floor, as many people tend to do. There are limitations, though. As of right now, the browsing is limited, you may only browse a book for an hour. After that, time's up!
Wi-Fi and Internet Access
Wi-fi is a great option to have. I have it connected to my network at home and it downloads books a bit faster than it does with the AT&T card. It is also the way you connect with a Barnes & Noble store, which it does automatically when you walk in. One feature missing from nook is the web browser that the Kindle has. But to be quite honest, the web browser on my Kindle was found in the "Experimental" section along with the music player, and it was rudimentary. It felt like I had been transported back in time and I was trying to use an archaic machine to access futuristic content. The Kindle's web browser would often lock up and it was incredibly slow. It was on a 2G network instead of the newer 3G, but it was still terrible. If they do eventually add a web browser to nook, hopefully it won't be so terrible.
Free Cookie
I went into a Barnes & Noble with a cafe and a coupon for a free cookie popped up on my nook. How cool is that? My husband's gotten three, he'll be sad when the coupon expires January 6th. He took a picture with his iPhone and sent it to me because he was so excited. He said when he took it to the cafe, the people there started freaking out because he was the first one who had come in for it.
Final Impressions, at least for now
All-in-all, I like my nook. I like it better than the Kindle and it feels a lot less first-generation than the original Kindle did. The hardware is polished, and once the software catches up with that, it'll be great. I may revisit this post or update it if anything changes. I'm also going to order one of those snazzy colored backings for my nook. When I ordered the covers, the backings weren't in stock yet. My husband also likes his nook, though he doesn't have much to compare it to. I will be experimenting more and more with my nook, and I'll be interested to see how people hack it. It's basically a computer with free wireless access all the time, if you want to think of it that way. People have already hacked it and put Pandora on it, so it's only a matter of time before they do more.
Do I recommend the nook? Of course. I think it's great. Just remember, as with any new piece of technology, there is an early adopter tax to be paid. If you don't mind a few hiccups, get yourself a nook. Give them as gifts, people will love them, especially if they've never used a Kindle before. But if you want something a little more polished, either wait a while or get a Kindle. Just remember, the Kindle started out just as rough as nook, just give it some time.
nook is on top, original Kindle in the middle, Kindle 2 on the bottom.