Barnes and Noble and the Great Nook adventure

First up, I am still for the most part in love with my Nook. As a reading device it is great. It is a one trick pony and it does it very well. I am currently reading a book called Brains: How They Seem to Work by Dale Purves. It seemed interesting and I have been very surprised at how good a book it is. Yes, the book is full of technical terms that I am trying hard to wrap my brain around, but it is a very good read. It is fascinating how the field of neuroscience developed since the early days and how much we have learned about the brain and the methods discovered to study the brain, the nervous system, and how it all interacts together. I am a good ways into the book and I am really enjoying it.

I have told myself I will not buy any more books until I finish the first one. I read about study that said it takes longer to read ebooks and in another study, most users never finish reading ebooks. I hope this is not the case. So far I am enjoying the fact there are so many free ebooks and being able to load my PDFs onto the device to read as well. But PDFs do not read as well as epub books. The font clarity is not the same on the Nook and it is not as easy to select text in PDFs. Also it would be good if one could zoom in on images in the book. With the small screen, it would be good to be able to do this. Granted if these pictures were in a paperback book, I would have the same issue.

I do have one big complaint about the Nook though. Barnes and Noble markets books that will only work on the Nook Color. In fact at times it seems they "prefer" I use one of the software ereaders or the Nook Color over the device I purchased. I would be happy if under preferences if I could filter my search so it only shows books that will work on my display. Barnes and Noble offered a free book on Mickey Mantle by Jane Leavy to suck me into the Nook world. It isn't free now. But I added it to My Library looking forward to reading it on my Nook (I started stockpiling free and paid books just to read when my Nook would arrive), but this book can't be read on my Nook (the New Simple Touch Reader one). Even worse, it won't let me download it on my Nook for PC or Nook for Mac. So the book is in "My Library" but is unreadable for me so far. My Android phone seems to have an option to download it but not anything else I have.

So Barnes and Noble, please fix this one small thing. Let me be able to search and only find books that my reader can actually use.

By Hook or by Nook

Okay. So I put off picking a winner in the ebooks war for the longest time. Then I decided I didn't want to pay the price it costs for the winner, but instead base it on features that mattered to me. So I bought a Nook (the new edition) I would prefer to call it the Nook Touch, but that isn't want Barnes and Noble is calling it.

When a geek decides subconsciously that he wants new technology items, he goes through a justification processes. Some how he logics that that he can justify the cost of the device by some notion. In this case I am using the lame excuse I need to study for my PMP exam. And because this device has limited functionality (meaning it has less bells and whistles) I would be able to focus. I have a really short attention span so I thought if I had a device that only does one thing and it does it really well, then I would read and focus.

Why I choose the "All-New Nook 'The Simple Touch Reader'"?
1. microSD card port - This way I can easily add my own books and pdfs.
2. Two months of battery life -- Okay, this is more cool and mostly marketing as you have to turn wireless off and it is assuming you will read one hour a day.
3. Super light -- It weighs about the same as a paperback book. Seriously.
4. Touch -- The Kindle just has so many buttons on it and is bigger than it needs to be because of this. I know the Kindle will come out in a touch screen version. I even guestimate Amazon will be releasing their own Android based tablet with Kindle eInk built in. I also speculate the next iPad will have a way to display eInk to save on power and improve readability and then bounce back into normal display mode when you want to do other stuff. So perhaps I jumped in the wrong place. Let's not talk that way as you will cause me buyers remorse.

I see some cons to this device already.
1. Not color, which means there are books on barnesandnoble.com that I can not download to my device. Ugh!
2. Device can't do a lot with pdfs except display them. I can't really zoom a lot with a pdf to try and get bigger texted. I am not going blind but it displays the table of contents really small.
3. The site does not tell you easily that your particular nook won't work with it. They seem to want you to buy the color nook yet they are hyping the newest one.

What I really like...
1. The display quality is amazing.
2. The touch functionality works great.
3. There are so many free books on barnesandnoble.com and other sites I have yet to actually buy a book, but I will. I have my eye on some already.
4. Wireless works great.
5. Response time is great. Books pop up quick and pages turn fast.

My next post I will tell you about the amazing software I downloaded, Calibre. It is a great ebook manager for what ever device you choose.