B&N Enters the Ebook reader market with the "Nook"

[Bert Latamore]

I just was looking at the announcement of the "Nook", the new ebook reader from Barns & Noble. It has a couple of interesting features but basically seems to be a "me-too" product.

It costs $258 and uses E-Ink technology for its main display. It has a second strip display at the bottom that is full color that bsically shows book covers apparently so you can select books to downlaod and read.

* 2 GB of internal memory, but it also has a micro-SD slot to allow you to add memory cards.

* It has audio and can play recorded books and music (MP3) (I guess so you can listen to music while you read.) No idea how its audio controls work, and it does not seem to support iTunes.

* It also supports lending -- the ad says most ebooks can be lent to friends for up to 14 days. That is novel.

* It also says it supports making notes and bookmarking in books, although it does not seem to have a keyboard of any kind, so I am unsure of how you write a note.

* IT supports the EPUB, eReader (remember, B&N owns eReader and Fictionwise), and PDF standards (at least it says that PDFs are "easily displayed). 

* Long life battery (the ad says rather vaguely that you can "read for days").

* It looks nice and seems to be a nice size, although that is hard to judge in a photo.

What it doesn't have:

* Color display -- don't plan on using it for books or business PDFs with color graphics.

* Backlight -- This lack of a backlight, which I often use when reading on my UX, is actually described as a "feature". I found that interesting.

* Support for other ebook formats.

So essentially you can pay $260 for this (you can buy a lot of books for $260) and get one book free with it, and read your books on a gray scale screen with no backlight, or you can read most of the same books from eReader on any of a list of smart phones and other handhelds including the iPhone/Touch and both Mac and Windows portables, that you are using anyway. The long battery life is nice. I do occasionally read until my battery is close to dying on the UX (but then I just get the power cord out and plug it in by my recliner and continue reading). But otherwise this does not convince me. I see it as an expensive extra gadget that I have to carry around with me. 

I really wonder how many of the people who bought the Kindle actually use it regularly and how many have long since relegated it to the back of a closet somewhere. For that matter, I wonder how many people actually have purchased the Kindle at all. Amazon isn't saying.

All the best,

--
Bert Latamore
IT Journalist, Report Writer and Book Doctor
From tweets and blogs to white papers and books --
You provide the information; I craft the words.

[Aaron F. Gonzalez]

I've already pre-ordered mine.

I've been using a Sony 505 for the last year for most of my reading
(going back and forth between that and my phone) so the idea of having
my e-ink reader be capable of reading all of my eReader content plus
still have epub support and get the added 3G, I'm sold.

I love my ebooks on phones, but it's the Sony device that gets the most
use on the train in the morning and on trips.

Using e-ink in direct sunlight in the summer is fantastic. No more
hiding in the shaded area to read.

Dedicated readers aren't for everyone, but I sure love 'em.

[Jesper Anderson]

An e-ink display which does not rely on backlight is indeed a feature.
I have ereader software for my VGA Pocket PC, my iPod Touch, my Sony
Clié and my various laptops, and none of them come close to the e-ink
display on my Sony Reader when outdoors, or for that matter anywhere
near a lightsource. The clarity of an e-ink display is quite different
from that of an LCD. Some people don't like it, but I see sharpness
(or lack thereof) very well, and no LCD is even remotely as sharp as
e-ink.

Thus, my Sony Reader gets much more mileage than any of my other
devices, despite being yet another thing to lug around. It's well
worth it, for the screen and battery life.

Jesper

[Bert Latamore]

I on the other hand do almost all of my reading indoors, although on a good afternoon I might sit on the porch or deck and read. I find a backlight very helpful, particularly since the lights around the house are not always positioned optimally for shining on a page. It also helps when reading in a moving vehicle. I am partial to motion sickness, which is brought on partly by sudden variations in light when I am trying to read. The backlight overpowers those and makes it easier for me to read when traveling (and not driving, obviously. Then I listen to podcasts).

Bert

[Richard Cartwright]

I believe for that price I will buy $260.00 worth of books for my Treo and tx.

--
Richard D. Cartwright
P.O. Box 1144
Hixson, TN 37343
901-493-6612

__________________________________

If Dante had known about daytime television the Ninth Circle of Hell would have TV sets.

[PhilippeR]

Bert, I can't understand why you think a dedicated ereading device
like the Sony or the Kindle is going to be put to rest in a closet
somewhere. Everyone I know who has one - we have three in my family -
uses it regularly. I see people on buses, subways, trains using them.
And I have mine with me almost all the time. I read the NYTimes and
the New Yorker on my Kindle and find that easier because I don't have
to hold something larger and in need of folding. I still am not clear
on whether you have ever used one but I am willing to bet that, if you
did, you would prefer the experience to reading on a backlit screen.
Try one and see, and then let us know.

Richard you can buy that $260 worth of books but remember that with a
Sony or a Kindle, you can download tons of out of copyright material
absolutely free.

[Laura Conrad]

>>>>> "Philippe" == PhilippeR <pdra...@gmail.com> writes:

Philippe> Richard you can buy that $260 worth of books but
Philippe> remember that with a Sony or a Kindle, you can download
Philippe> tons of out of copyright material absolutely free.

The out of copyright material is the easy part. You can download that
onto any device that has enough memory.

--
Laura (mailto:lco...@laymusic.org)
(617) 661-8097 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org

...in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made
up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are
taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the
stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the
essays.

C. S. Lewis, _The Horse and His Boy_

[Kerry Lannert]

I pre-ordered mine last night, too.
I'm not typically an early adopter, I like to wait until a device has
at least a revision before I buy in nowadays. This, though, is what
I've been wanting for years. When I bought my Sony 505 two years ago I
was sad that I couldn't use my eReader books, or have a built-in
dictionary or hilight text like I had on my PDAs, but the tradeoff is
worth it. Now that I can have a device that will be compatible with my
dozens of eReader books and won't be a compromise on features, I'm
sold. I was tempted to get the Sony 600 when it came out a couple of
months ago, to get the dictionary and hilighting back, but the loss of
contrast was a dealbreaker.
When I saw the nook it was a facepalm moment. Why hadn't anybody else
figured out that a contextual menu system is the smartest way to deal
with an e-ink reader? Dedicated buttons mean you end up with a monster
like the Kindle or sacrifice features like the Sony. Touchscreens are
nice in concept, but e-ink refreshes slowly, making any menu selection
or browsing process a little tedious. And using a traditional
touchscreen means losing contrast, since you have to add a layer above
the the e-ink. I-Rex got around this by using a wacom layer under the
e-ink, but that forces you to use a dedicated pen for input. No
fingers allowed. I think B&N has been watching the field very closely
here, and waited until they came up with just the right design before
jumping in.

This is going to be a very difficult six weeks, waiting for my nook to
arrive.

- Kerry

[Donald Stidwell]

More info on Nook. It will read eReader/Fictionwise books but they have to
be transferred via USB: http://bit.ly/2ajN9Q

[Man Ching Cheung]

Just a thought; I wonder if the touch screen at the bottom can be
programmed to display footnotes and annotations? That might open up
some interesting extensions for ebooks. (This is merely a desire on my
part; I haven't found any such reference or inference in all the press
release and faqs I came across.) mcc

[Kerry Lannert]

Since the device runs android my guess is that B&N will be able to very
easily add features down the road. The lower screen can be used to enter
notes for the book, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine using
it to display footnotes, etc. Also, thanks to android, this may be a
device that's easy to hack and add homebrew features.

[Bert Latamore]

Kerry,

That is a good thought. The problem is that the main screen is eInk, which is specifically designed for reading material. It is not generally considered adequate for general computer displays because it lacks the graphic ability and color display.

Bert

[Kerry Lannert]

This is true, but considering the gusto with which people have been
hacking the linux-based Sony Readers and even the Kindle, I suspect the
lower screen combined with android might make for some very interesting
uses. You could build a basic solitaire game playable on the lower
screen, for example. The way they've built the store you do all the
browsing on the lower screen, and the upper screen is only used for
displaying detailed pages about the books you're browsing. Bottom screen
for graphics, upper screen for text. More creative people than I could
probably have a field day with this setup.

[Man Ching Cheung]

I suppose we'll see how useful the bottom color display bar is for
displaying text and providing a soft-keyboard for users. I know it's
nice to have extensibility, but there are some things that should be
available out of the box. It's like all these engineers are designing
an electronic replacement for a book rather than an ebook reader ;)

mcc

[Bert Latamore]

But how large is that lower screen? It looks pretty narrow to me in the photos. I think it would be pretty hard to read, say Pimlical or Quicken (to name two applications I use constantly) in that screen.

[Kerry Lannert]

It's a 3.5" display, which puts the area at roughly the same as an
iPhone. I can't find the pixel dimensions, though, so I have no idea how
high the resolution is. At least 72dpi, hopefully much higher.
Sure, you wouldn't want to view a whole month of a calendar on it, but
you could do a pretty nice graphical week view, and most certainly
scroll through a list view. You could view a static month calendar on
the e-ink screen and use the lower screen for event details and
add/edit. Same thing for Quicken, you could use the upper screen to view
a list of transactions and then use the lower screen to add/edit
transactions or view trends.

[Bert Latamore]

Well, color is an important part of the information on a Quicken screen. I would not want to step back to gray scale for that and most other displays. It would work potentially for a word processor, presuming that the screen responds quickly enough. I have no experience with eInk and just don't know about that. 

The other thing is that I don't know if there would be a real market for a version of this with other applications. People clearly want keyboards. The latest thing in portables for instance is not windows tablets but Windows and Linux netbooks, which essentially look and operate like small laptops, with an attached keyboard. I am in the distinct minority in wanting a tablet format computer with an attachable keyboard instead. I want something I can hold in my hand and use standing up easily, but that is not what is selling.

But even at that the tablets that are out there are falling in price because the price of components is dropping. So would a $500 tablet computer be heavy competition for a $350 ebook reader, given that you can of course read ebooks on the tablet also? 

But just to give an example of why I prefer that: Today I had to go down to Front Royal to meet my wife for lunch, a rare treat. We were meeting at the eye doctor's actually, where she was picking up her new reading glasses. While I was going I also wanted to take our trash to the recycling and do the grocery shopping (I usually do those on Sundays, but this week we had a nasty personal emergency -- our dog died apparently of brain cancer -- so I did not get to them). 

I actually arrived at the eye doctor's 20 minutes early. No problem, I had my UX with me, and it is a beautiful day, so I put the windows down in the car and read my book while listening to music on my iPod until Moire arrived. I hadn't brought the UX for that reason -- I needed it so I could enter our expenditures in Quicken and because I have my shopping list in it (I so wish there was a Windows version of Handishopper, btw! That is one Palm app I really miss). But since it was there my book was with me. If I was reading a paper book or a book on a single-use device I might very well not have thought to bring it with me, and it certainly would have been a problem if I did -- do I leave it in the hot car or carry it along with my UX into the doctor's office, the restaurant, and the food store?

Bert

[Kerry Lannert]

I'm sorry to hear about your dog, that's terrible.
I don't think anybody intends to turn an e-ink device into a
full-fledged computer or even a competitor for a netbook (or your UX).
For example, I do about 95% of my PDA stuff on my iPhone, which also
acts as my iPod, but I almost never read on it. For me, an e-ink reader
is really just for reading, and I keep it on-hand pretty much always for
that purpose. But, as mentioned before, using the lower screen to add
book-related functionality would be wonderful, and some folks out there
might want to add additional entertainment to the device. One could
definitely play around with it and add some functionality, since the OS
and the hardware are both there, but of course it's not going to be a
full-fledged PDA/netbook replacement. Also, regardless of the desires of
executives at Sony, Amazon and B&N, not everybody out there wants a
dedicated e-reading device. In fact, I would hazard to guess that the
majority of people don't and probably won't in the future. That said,
the number of us who do is growing.
Also, it's $260, not $350. The $300 I paid for my 505 two years ago is
starting to feel like a bit of a rip-off.

[Man Ching Cheung]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Bert Latamore <bert.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, color is an important part of the information on a Quicken screen. I
> would not want to step back to gray scale for that and most other displays.
> It would work potentially for a word processor, presuming that the screen
> responds quickly enough. I have no experience with eInk and just don't know
> about that.

You and Kerry seem to be going back and forth. Kerry and I were
thinking of using the LCD screen at the bottom of the screen as a
display for other things. In this case, you would have color and so
forth. Whether the pixel resolution, for the majority of users, is
satisfactory remains to be seen. I think Kerry is referring to the
fact that a fair amount of information might be displayed on the LCD
screen, which is at least the same width as the eink screen. You are
thinking of more complex sorts of visual goodness for the eink screen,
maybe? That's my interpretation of your last several posts...

mcc

[Man Ching Cheung]

Oh, if you are interested, Cringely swears that Apple has something up
its sleeve regarding ebook readers, including an eink color display
that refreshes at video rates. Nice, but it's all speculation.

http://bit.ly/VVzKo
and
http://bit.ly/hrgFl


mcc

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Bert Latamore <bert.l...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Bert Latamore]

Now an e-ink color display that refreshes quickly would be very interesting. That has been a dream for the next generation portable for years, of course. Much thinner and lighter, and much more durable. And once production ramps up, probably cheaper as well. And of course it is still e-ink, so it would also be great for reading. I still would like a backlight, however, for reading inside.

[Jesper Anderson]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 21:46, Bert Latamore <bert.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am in the distinct minority in wanting a tablet format computer with an
> attachable keyboard instead.

Most certainly not. The problem so far is a combination of price,
performance, battery life and (to my mind the most important factor) a
proper tablet GUI. The Windows paradigm totally sucks on phones, and
it's even worse on tablets. Apple have a huge advantage with their
polished iPhone / iPod Touch interface, and I'm certain they're
working on making that work on a full size tablet system.

> So would a $500 tablet computer be heavy competition for a $350 ebook reader,
> given that you can of course read ebooks on the tablet also?

If the tablet computer has 50+ hours battery time, then most certainly
yes. Except the LCD will not be as good for reading as the eink screen
is. And the device will be heavier and more fragile.

I expect future ebooks to get slimmer and more portable, and maybe
even "rubberized" and thus rugged - maybe even foldable or rollable.
And in a few generations of oled / eink a proper multipurpose display
with the sharpness off eink, the contrast of oled and the speed
surpassing even what oled and lcd have today will make a true
multipurpose device a reality. Until then I will stick with my eink
for reading and my LCD for home use and GUI. I occasionally read on
the iPhone, but it's nowhere near as comfortable.

I am, however, highly impressed with the screen on my new Macbook Pro
13.3". It's sharp, bright and with immense contrast. Miles ahead of
any other laptop screen I've ever used. I suspect convergent devices
which will satisfy even my aging eyes are not that far away. The only
problem is it can't beat 7 hours battery life without some serious
effort, and that's nowhere near enough.

Jesper

[Bert Latamore]

Jesper,

As someone who uses a Windows tablet daily, I think you are a little hard on the Windows GUI on a tablet. It certainly is not perfect, but it works pretty well on a touch screen. 

The big problem I have is that the editing screens of some of the applications I use, particularly Quicken and Pimlical, are not sized well for the Vaio UX screen. This probably is not a problem on larger tablets, but the Vaio is really sized as a large handheld (which is what I wanted) rather than a clipboard-sized tablet. In some cases I have to switch layouts from horizontal to vertical to get to the "okay" button and then back to horizontal for editing, which is annoying. But I can live with it, and the advantage of having everything with me when I need to go out of the office is worthwhile.

On the other hand, I am not arguing that something like the iPhone GUI would be better.

One thing I would add to your list is a good virtual keyboard, like the Fitaly keyboard. That is what makes the UX usable for me -- as far as I have every been able to discover the UX totally lacks handwriting recognition, and the built-in chicklet keyboard under the screen is very slow and difficult to use. It is one thing I do not like about the design. Fortunately Fitaly on Windows is terrific.

Bert

[Jesper Anderson]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 22:35, Bert Latamore <bert.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jesper,
> As someone who uses a Windows tablet daily, I think you are a little hard on
> the Windows GUI on a tablet. It certainly is not perfect, but it works
> pretty well on a touch screen.

You should hear me on the Windows GUI on a Desktop system - to put it
mildly, it blows chunks compared to the best GUI's out there. Even OSX
beats the pants off of it. Yes, it *works*, especially once you've
gotten used to the kinks and warts, and I can make it jump through
hoops on command - but it's not even remotely as smooth an experience
as it could be.

> One thing I would add to your list is a good virtual keyboard, like the
> Fitaly keyboard.

The iPhone keyboard is excellent for occasional text input, but won't
do for entering masses of text. Fitaly or somesuch would be a great
addition. And a good kana/kanji input for my Japanese studies - this
is something which bugs me about the iPhone.

And, well, yeah, I'm hard on the Windows GUI. Or not so much the GUI
alone, but the total system of memory management, file allocation
methods and general resource management. Windows is built with planned
obsolesence and designed to rot with use in order to provide incentive
to upgrade, and that shows - and it annoys me very much, since it
would be so easy to make it much, much better.

*rant mode off*, heheh

Jesper

[Bert Latamore]

Oh, well, if you want to get into the architecture of Windows, yes it leaves a lot to be desired. Drives me crazy regularly.

The thing that gets me most with the UX is that things just stop working. For instance, about three weeks ago (I think) Weatherbug and Vonage Companion started crashing every time I tried to start them. (Vonage is a US public VoIP system that replaces the wire-line dial-up phone service. Vonage Companion is a piece of Front End software allowing you to make and receive calls, and record them, on Windows or Mac). I tried everything I could think of including completely deinstalling them, running CCleaner to take everything out of the Registry, and then reinstalling them No luck at all. Then a few days ago they suddenly started working again. I have no idea why they were crashing or why they are working now.

At the moment it appears that the finger print reader is not working. No idea why, except that I have installed a couple of new updates from Microsoft in the last couple of days. That may or may not have anything to do with it. However, I can live without that much easier than I can without Weatherbug and VOnage. 

Oh, and this morning when I started Firefox it announced that it had identified something in Windows as causing instabilities. That's nice.

Bert

[Jesper Anderson]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 22:54, Bert Latamore <bert.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, well, if you want to get into the architecture of Windows, yes it leaves
> a lot to be desired. Drives me crazy regularly.

The problems you describe aren't particularly unique, which is the sad
part. There's a lot of tinkering and hammering just to keep a modern
Windows system at status quo, which is of course how both Microsoft
and major retailers want things to be.

But more specifically regarding the GUI, after having tried some (very
simple) approaches like Rat Poison and the iPhone interface, the
paradigm of individual overlapping windows seems very feeble for a
limited interface. By limited I mean either in size, bandwidth of
input, processing power or combinations thereof. Palm got it right on
the first try, and then proceeded to mess it up more and more as time
went by. Microsoft still haven't "got it" in a mainstream OS, although
if they feel desperate enough to make a new platform from their
concept tablet they could well be at the head of the pack very soon.
Provided it actually gets passed the frothing execs intact, that is.

What Firefox is noticing is the Firefox addon which Microsoft have
installed for you without your consent or knowledge, which is so
ridden with security holes that Microsoft themselves have an advisory
out for it. The Firefox team disabled it, and since Microsoft in all
their wisdom left the addon versionless there is no way to know if the
version installed on your system is an old broken or modern "safe" (as
in; known vulnerabilities have at least been patched) version.

Did I mention how relaxed I feel, not using any MS platforms for my
personal stuff? =)

Jesper

[Bert Latamore]

Jesper,

Thanks for the information. That explains why Firefox has been so difficult for the last few months. It is Microsoft trying to sabotage it. Typical! I have switched over to Chrome for most things but at least one site I need from time to time does not work with Chrome. BTW, most of the time I cannot get IE to run on the UX either.

As for other operating systems, my problem is that to get the form factor I want, I pretty much have to go with Microsoft.

Bert