Lates book notes -- B&N upgrades

[Bert Latamore]

I would normally post this on the woyp book club, but given the suspicious activity I have seen there lately (see my last e-mail) I am no longer using that list.

Anyway, I just finished my latest read -- Terry Pratchett's "Unseen Academicals". If you are not familiar with Terry Pratchett (properly Sir Terry Pratchett now), he is a very funny, satirical fantasy writer whose long-running "Diskworld" series has provided me with many hours of enjoyment. He is British and so is his humor. If you enjoyed the "Hitchhiker's Guide" series, you want to read Terry Pratchett. And this latest of his books does not disappoint. Not quite as good as "Going Postal", but still overall well worth reading. It is available at eReader, B&N and probably other e-book providers as well, as an audio book from Audible, and of course on paper. I read the eReader version.

So today I checked on the B&N ebook situation. They now accept B&N gift cards, so I decided to buy my next book from that store rather than from eReader. When I did that I got a notice of a new version of the B&N desktop reader for Windows, so I downloaded and installed that. It is a major upgrade from the original software borrowed from eReader.com. I have not gotten to play with it much yet, but it has a different user interface and look and is pretty tightly integrated with the Web site. Looks nice at first glance. I particularly like the sidebar with a list of navigational functions and the integration of magazines and newspapers into the reader. Underneath, I think it is still the eReader software, and I am not sure that it offers any new functionality not in that, but the user interface is very nice.

The new book, btw, is "Tokyo Vice, An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan" by Jake Adelstein.  I heard him interviewed on "Fresh Air", and as a former daily newspaper journalist I am looking forward to reading this autobiography of the only non-Japanese ever to be admitted as a member of Japan's Press Guild.

All the best,

--
Bert Latamore
Editor, The Seybold Report on Office Technology,
Freelance Writer and Book Doctor

[Stewart]

So Bert, what device are you using to read your ebooks on? Is it a
small Sony UMPC?

---
Stewart in Calgary

[Bert Latamore]

Stewart,

Yes, the hardware is a small Sony tablet, a Vaio UX running Vista that I use as my combination production computer and PDA and book reader. It has its quirks but is an excellent book reader and for something so small really a pretty good handheld computer. It has about a 3 hour battery life (I have the larger battery) when reading, less if you are watching video but I haven't done that handheld.

At the moment I am reading a book in the B&N reader software. I have forgotten if I mentioned that or not. Overall, compared to the eReader software, it has some nice features and a couple of definite issues.

First, I like the layout. Rather than pull-down menus, it has a column on the left side of the screen with major headers that access functional menus and let you look at your library, read the B&N newsletter, or red a book or magazine (I haven't tried reading a magazine yet so can't comment on that). If I tap "annotations" or another choice that leads to a list, that list appears to the right of the menu screen, with the book to the right of that. When I am reading and don't want the menu list, a tap of a radio button takes it off screen.

I also like the integration between the reader and online store, which seems so far to be seamless. 

The display is excellent, and I can choose from any typeface available on my computer. I am reading in Palatino Linotype, but that is just a personal choice. The display does resize the effective type size to fit the open window, and I find that I need to set the type size for 14 point to get a comfortable size on the small handheld screen, but I have to do that in eReader as well.

However, there are a couple of things I do not like. First the store: It does now accept gift cards, which I definitely like. But they are set up for you to buy one book at a time. So if you want to buy three books the only way to do it at this time is to make three separate purchases. I find that inconvenient.

The other thing that bothers me is that I cannot find any way either to highlight text permanently or to add a note or annotation to text in the present version of this software. That's fine if all you want to read are throw-away novels, but I often want to highlight to create a set of notes on main items in a book that I can then review later and to add my own notes and annotations. 

One area I cannot comment on yet, since I only have one book, is the organizational tools for the library, if any. The tools for eReader are pretty minimal, and I am hoping for better from B&N, but I haven't tried that out yet. In particular I want to be able to organize my library online rather than on my machine and to be able to cross-index books into several subjects easily. In eReader I can only organize on my machine and, for instance, I lost all my organization when I moved from the Palm to Windows, and since then I experienced some sort of software reset that wiped out all my library organization. I had that happen to me several times on the Palm, basically when I had to reset the device to get it out of a loop. On Windows I have no idea what happened. One day I opened the eReader software, went to the library, and everything was gone. I had not made any changes to anything or experienced any particular computer problems. I really don't like that. So I hope B&N has something better to offer.

So those are my impressions at this point. Of course some of this may change as B&N updates its software.

Happy New Year,

Bert

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[Stewart]

Bert, after reading your description, I went and fetched a copy of the
B&N Reader for Mac. I discovered it's just the eReader with a
different name. And it can't open pdf files. I also fetched a copy
of the iPhone app and installed it on my iPod Touch. You get 5 free
books just for downloading it and opening a free account, so I now
have a mini-library on it.

Kindle for Mac isn't available yet. If Amazon doesn't hurry up, Apple
will beat them to the punch by releasing its own reader device (we
expect).

cheers
Stewart

[Bert Latamore]

Stewart,

Thanks for the note. I would be very interested in hearing what you think of the iPhone app from B&N (and from Amazon as well if you try that one out). 

The first version of the B&N reader for Windows was just the eReader software. This new version came as an "upgrade" but appears to be a totally different app. Unfortunately the book organization abilities are primitive -- possibly even more primitive than eReader's. That is the big weakness of both readers.

Bert

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