Archive for the ‘nook vs. kindle’ tag
Disturbing Cracks Starting to Appear in the nook’s Facade no comments
There are a few disturbing reports on the Barnes & Noble nook related forums of nook ereaders which are already developing stress related cracks on the page turning buttons. There are also reported sightings of cracked nook demos in B&N stores.
Unlike most other ereaders which have a page turning button presented through a cutout in the bezel, the nook uses a flexible plastic bezel that when depressed activates the page turning mechanism. This repeated flexing is apparently causing fatigue in the plastic which is then cracking.
The picture above shows the page turning buttons on the Kindle and the nook, and a close-up shot of a cracked nook bezel submitted to the B&N forum by icebike.
This is a worrisome development as the nook ereader has only been on the street for less than two months. Hopefully this will prove to be a production problem that only affects a certain percentage of nooks, though I really doubt it. B & N should have known better than to expect a strip of plastic like this to withstand thousands and thousands of flexes as users advance pages. As the nook ages this could blow up into a major headache for both owners of the nook ereader and Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble appears to be replacing nooks with cracks; but from what I have read I would advise that when you call their customer service you stress that the crack is interfering with your use of the ereader rather than just being a cosmetic problem. Even if it seems to you to be only a cosmetic problem at first, it will interfere with your ereader’s operation as the crack gets worse.
It might also be a good idea to use the LCD touchscreen for page turns as much as possible.
Update: It seems a reasonable assumption that this problem is exacerbated by cold. If you are out and about in the winter wonderland with your nook, you might want to let it warm up a bit before using the page turning buttons.
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nook eReader Owners get More Coal in Their Christmas Stockings 1 comment
Yesterday while Amazon was busy selling more Kindle books than paper books for the first time ever, things were not quite as cozy and copacetic over at the Barnes & Noble campsite.
On the morning of the first day that nook demos became available at B&N stores I went in to my local store and got to take one of the new ereaders for a test drive. One of the sales staff (I think he may have been the store manager) let me actually download a paid book to the demo nook. The download worked as advertised and the new book was available for “formatting” within a few seconds.
As the first wave of nooks to be shipped out began arriving and owners of B&N’s latest and greatest began reporting in to the Barnes & Noble forums it began to appear that my painless experience with the nook’s wireless ebook purchase and delivery system might be more of an exception than the rule. It was becoming apparent from the complaints and reports of ebook purchasing snafus that B&N had probably underestimated the content server capacity needed to support their new ereader.
Buying ebooks on an ereader with a wireless connection is so easy. So easy to click on a few books and add them to your library to be read later. If you are not careful, before you know it you have more to read than you can get to in the next year or so. Once the novelty wears off a bit, ereader owners usually become a bit more judicious with their purchases; realizing the need to pace their buys with their reading speed (and thickness of wallet) and making fewer impulse buys.
It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that when a huge pack of new customers get their eagerly awaited new ereader toy that is already way sold out in pre-order they are going to want to buy a bunch of ebooks to put on it, and so there needs to be an adequate content server system in place to cover that demand.
On Christmas Day Barnes & Noble once again demonstrated their seemingly willful
unpreparedness. Nook owners who tried to purchase and download books to their new ereaders yesterday either received error messages or a “Queued: Will complete shortly” message which didn’t go away until early this morning when downloading started working again. Those who tried to download ebooks from B&N to their PC’s and then sideload to their ereaders had the same problem.
One has to wonder how many sales B&N lost due to this latest failure, not to mention adding to their customer’s frustration and angst. To make matters worse there was zero communication from Barnes & Noble to explain or apologize for the glitches.
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Nook Update no comments
Nook ereaders began receiving the first of Barnes & Noble’s promised firmware updates on Sunday.
So far users report experiencing faster page turns and less time spent with the infamous “formatting” screen. Some comments on the B&N forum also claim improved responsiveness from the touch screen as well as a few other small improvements. The in-store WiFi connection has been enabled and nook owners who bring their ereaders to a B&N store should find a coupon for a free cookie.
The update (v1.1.0) does seem to have caused a new problem with Adobe Digital Editions however. The ADE software which you need to load ebooks in this format onto the nook places your books in the Adobe folder. To read them you need to move the books to the My Documents folder so that the nook can recognize them.
Some nook pre-orders that were originally supposed to ship by Dec. 18 may not make it for Christmas (big surprise). B&N is offering a $100 gift certificate to some of these customers:
All customers in the original Dec. 18 group will receive an email tonight (12/18) with information about their orders.
Most of these customers will be told that their nook will arrive by Dec. 24, as originally promised.
Some customers will receive an email indicating that we are aiming to deliver your nook by Dec. 24. Because we know that some of these orders are gifts, we are sending all of these customers a nook Holiday Certificate that they can use if they need to.The Holiday Certificate will be delivered by Dec. 24. If we cannot get these nooks to you by Dec. 24, we will ship them for overnight delivery by Dec. 29. If this happens, we will email you on Dec. 23 with updated information, and a bn.com online gift certificate.
We apologize for the delays, and thank you for your patience and understanding. Please check your email for full details. And, as always, check with customer service at 1-800-THE-BOOK if you have further questions about your specific order.
I wanted to get a nook ereader myself, but I procrastinated and didn’t place my order when the nook was first announced. I did place an order on November 8, with an expected shipping date of Dec. 11. After reading all of the negative reviews, playing with a nook demo myself, seeing the shipping date slip several times and finally reading about all of the problems people were having when they did receive their nooks I cancelled my order. So far I have to say that I have not seen much to make me regret jumping ship. Well, on the other hand, there are those free cookies.
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Hands-On With a nook eReader Demo no comments
My local Barnes & Noble did in fact get their nook ereader demo over the weekend and had it on display today. Silly me for being a doubting Thomas.
Surprisingly, I had the demo to myself for about ten minutes. The staff at B&N was very friendly and eager to demo the demo for me, but it’s obvious that they are still learning – there definitely is a pretty steep learning curve with the nook’s control and navigation system; it does not seem very intuitive.
The color book covers on the LCD screen are nice, but it is not really a killer feature for me. As the nook reviewers have said, the scrolling on the LCD is not really smooth and is laggy. I was able to apply my thumbs to the virtual keyboard only a little, but it seemed average. I really had the impression that the navigation was over complicated and could be better implemented so as to simplify things. It will take more than the few minutes I had with the nook to get used to the control interface.
Yes, as other reviewers have found, the nook ereader is laggy, and I can see it being an annoying and frustrating distraction to one’s reading. Hopefully B&N will be able to remedy this soon with updates.
The nook ereader is one of those devices that I was expecting to be even more attractive in person than when viewed only in pictures. For me it wasn’t, though to be fair this was a demo unit that had been handled a lot. The LCD touchscreen is a fingerprint magnet for sure. Personally I find that I prefer the feel of the slightly lighter and thinner Kindle 2 in my hands, but you may feel otherwise. I do like the rubberized finish B&N used on the back of the nook ereader.
So how does the nook compare to the Kindle ereader now that I’ve been able to play with one for a few minutes?
nook vs Kindle eReader
The e-ink screen of both ereaders seems pretty much the same. However, due to the somewhat clumsy and slow controls of the nook I have to say that the Kindle still rules in terms of hardware. This could change if B&N releases effective updates soon. But Amazon is not standing still; the Kindles are a moving target and Barnes & Noble is the one playing catch up. Just this morning Amazon announced another feature upgrade that they are working on to make the Kindle ereaders better suited for use by those with visual impairments.
The Kindle ereaders are still available for the holidays. Besides being sold out until January, no one knows when B&N will have software updates available or how effective the updates will be. If you really want a nook, consider waiting a couple of months if you can.
Kindle eBook Store vs Other eBook Stores
Many who are considering buying a nook ereader or have already ordered one complain that they don’t like the Kindles because they lock you into getting your ebooks from one source, namely Amazon. Actually you can get non-DRM’ed ebooks including EPUB’s from other sources and convert them for the Kindle using a program such as Calibre, which is pretty easy to use. True, it would be even easier if the Kindle ereaders had built-in EPUB capability.
As for DRM’ed ebooks; yes, if you have a Kindle then the Kindle Store will be your primary source and Barnes & Noble hopes you will buy nook content from them. But you can also buy ebooks from other stores for the nook. Just don’t expect that you will be able to shop around and find the ebook you are looking for at a much better price, as in my experience many of the ebook stores have similar prices and the Kindle Store usually beats them all.
I would suggest making a list of books you want to read and do your own survey. I made an ebook price and availability comparison not too long ago with just over 100 ebooks and Amazon was the clear winner. Even more recently Inkmesh ran a comparison study with over 11,000 ebooks and again the Kindle Store came out on top.
To its credit, Barnes & Noble has said that they are working to lower the prices of their ebooks, but I doubt that they will ever be able to reach parity with the Kindle Store.
It is not only about price though; it is also about being able to find what you want to read as an ebook. The more off of the beaten path of the bestseller lists the books you read are, the more likely you are to find them available as an ebook at the Kindle Store.
How much all of this affects you will depend on what you read. If you mostly read current bestsellers then you will most likely find less price differences between the Kindle Store and other providers in many cases. If you want to read mainly public domain titles you can find loads of these for free for either ereader.
Customer Service
I’ve never had to return anything at Barnes & Noble, but I’m not encouraged by the way in which they have handled the nook launch. I also don’t like the fact that if you don’t like your new nook ereader you will have to pay a restocking fee to return it. This in spite of the fact that in order to get one in time for the holidays you had to order one sight unseen, with no reviews available and not even a manual posted online.
Update: The nook manual is now available online.
I see some on B&N’s forums saying that if the nook doesn’t live up to their expectations they will just eBay it. I wouldn’t count on this. I suspect that the halls of eBay will soon be crowded with nooks. Indeed, the prices being asked for on eBay for nook ereaders are already down from what they were a week or two ago.
I have made several returns on Amazon, which has a liberal 30 day return policy with no restocking charges. Recently I downloaded a few MP3 tracks which through my own silliness were unusable. When I called Amazon they graciously reauthorized my account so that I could download them again. They didn’t have to do this – it was my own negligence that caused the problem, but that is the customer service that I have come to expect from Amazon.
In conclusion, at this time I feel that the Kindle is still at the top of the ereader heap, with the nook a close second and nipping at Kindle’s heels. We will have to wait a bit and see if Barnes & Noble can fix the nook’s glitches in a timely manner and perhaps reevaluate.
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Barnes and Noble nook “shipping soon”, or is it? no comments
The nook ereader was supposed to begin shipping yesterday, Nov 30. Purchasers who were first in line and whose nook was supposed to ship yesterday have received emails telling them that their ereaders will not arrive now until December 9. As compensation, affected customers are told that they will receive a $10 gift certificate and an overnight shipping upgrade.
You were smart to order your nook early for 2 reasons:
You’ll be one of the first to have one. Your nook is shipping soon and
we expect to have it to you by December 9th. As an added bonus, we’ve upgraded you to overnight shipping!To thank you for being one of the first proud nook owners, we’re giving
you a $10 Barnes&Noble.com Online Gift Certificate. You can redeem it for cool and stylish nook accessories, bestsellers, exciting new DVDs and Music, and Toys & Games; and beginning in mid December, you’ll be able to redeem it for eBooks!
As you can imagine, Barnes & Noble’s nook related forums are full of angry voices. B&N appears to be turning what could have been a very successful new product launch into a fiasco. There are no doubt many reasons this is happening, but to name a few of the more obvious possible causes:
- B&N totally underestimated demand. Amazon is secretive about how many Kindles it sells, and this is a strategy that pays off when competitors are bringing a new ereader to market, as it is much harder for them to judge the demand, and therefore try to figure out how much product that they will need.
- Production delays. There are always glitches and delays when bringing a new gadget to market, and this is made worse when said gadget is being rushed for the holidays. Remember that shiny new thingie you bought last Christmas that wasn’t fully functional until the software update that came out six months later? What is really kind of worrying about the nook ereader is that no one has been able to review or demo one yet, so we really have no idea how functional it really is or isn’t. You can’t even view the manual online as of yet.
- Spring Design’s intellectual property lawsuit against Barnes and Noble. Yes, that elephant in the reading room. It could be that B&N is holding off of putting demos in stores and shipping nooks until the judge in the case decides whether or not to issue a preliminary injunction against B&N. In all fairness, the lawsuit could also have to do with the paucity of informative tidbits coming from the Barnes & Noble campsite.
- My impressions (and please do keep in mind that these are just my impressions) of the ebook section of the Barnes & Noble store pre-nook was that it was kind of the ugly stepchild department in the basement of the B&N Towers and that the rest of the company didn’t really take it very seriously, and it probably didn’t have much priority or get much love. Gift cards that don’t work for ebooks, no member discounts for ebooks, etc. When B&N announced that they were getting back into the ebook business back in July, I took a look at their store and was not overly impressed. The searches were sloppy and parts of the ebook store just didn’t work very well. It has become better in the intervening 5 months, and after the nook pre-orders have sold so well I’m sure the ebook department has a much more important role in the company, but all of this could help explain the apparent disorganization.
Whatever the case, Barnes & Noble is not making new friends and winning awards by the way in which it is handling the nook affair. The company needs to be more forthcoming as to the reasons for the delays, as it is rapidly loosing the trust and confidence of its customers. The worst thing that they can do is to keep delaying and missing shipment dates with little or no explanation. It is also important that B&N start treating their customers like adults – that email is just plain insulting.
With competitors like Barnes & Nobel who needs friends? Indeed, B&N and its nook ereader has so far proven to be a good thing for Amazon and its Kindle ereaders. First it announces the nook and its features long enough in advance of its actual release that Amazon has a chance to fill the gaps in the Kindle’s feature set. Then it gets everyone all hot and bothered about its cool looking ereader (probably even a lot of folks who were not even thinking of getting an ereader until the nook showed up) so that they want one for the holidays. Then it doesn’t have enough ereaders to meet the demand it has created, and now apparently B & N cannot even deliver on the orders it has taken by the promised dates.
I suspect that a lot of disappointed people will decide to buy a Kindle instead, especially if B&N continues to just let the situation fester. I think it is pretty safe to predict that the Kindle 
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Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG 2 comments
While previously placed preorders for the nook ereader should still ship at the end of November, purchasers who have preordered Barnes and Noble’s new ebook reader over the past few days are being advised by the company that their expected shipping date will be December 11.
This may be bad news for potential purchasers who planned on looking at and 
playing with a nook demo at the end of the month at a Barnes and Noble store before placing their orders. If the shipping date slips again, the end of November may be too late to place an order and have your ereader arrive in time for Christmas. This perhaps wouldn’t be such a problem if B & N had a friendlier return policy; if you preorder a nook and then don’t like it and return it within 14 days you will be charged a 10% restocking fee.
While it is always possible that this is a tactic Barnes and Noble is using in an attempt to create a rush to buy, it seems unlikely. The delayed nook shipping date is not mentioned on the site, rather you seem to find out about it after you place your order. More likely they didn’t anticipate the demand for the nook ereader.
Barnes and Noble also seems to have at least partially heard the many complaints about their pricing. They are advertising reduced prices on books for the holidays (for orders placed through Nov. 30) and free 3 day shipping for orders over $25, or over $10 if you are a member. However, the reduced prices don’t seem to apply to ebooks, which are still higher priced than elsewhere in many cases. Members do not receive any discounts on ebooks either.
Besides the nook ereader, Barnes and Noble will also support Plastic Logic’s Que ebook reader, which is due out early next year and which they have said will be available for purchase in all of their stores. They are also the ebook store of choice for Irex’s DR800SG ereader, which was supposed to be out by now, but has been delayed. When in place these three ebook readers will give B & N a very strong hardware presence; with a pretty wide range of feature sets, screen sizes and price points. Unless they fix their ebook store (it presently has fewer titles at higher prices) however, their challenge to Amazon for dominance of the ereader market is somewhat crippled. By the way, speaking of things nook vs Kindle; the nook is not the same price as the Kindle if you consider sales tax. Where I live that is about enough to pay for a Kindle cover.
And Speaking of the Irex DR800SG eReader
Meanwhile, back at the Irex camp, there is still nothing official on the missing DR800SG ereader. There are a couple of comments on the Irex blog by an Irex rep to the effect that Irex’s new ebook reader has suffered delays due to circumstances beyond Irex’s control, but may be on the shelves by the middle of this month; and she notes that all of this is is not official. She also says that the initial version of the DR800SG will be a special edition that includes “a ton of free content to get your reading started” and will be priced at $449. This probably explains (or is an attempt to explain) why the ebook reader was priced higher than MSRP when listed on Best Buy’s site.
Perhaps the DR800SG ereader is the victim of production delays, distribution problems (perhaps the container fell off the back of a ship?) or even a last minute bug reared its ugly head and had to be squashed by a firmware update. New gadgets are often plagued by delays and shortages, especially around the holidays. However, the way in which Best Buy displayed the DR800SG ereader very briefly on their website before disappearing it seems a bit suspect. If the ereader was just delayed why didn’t they just leave it up and list it as backordered? Perhaps the bug is in the Irex – Best Buy relationship? If the companies are still negotiating this might explain all of the silence.
At any rate, the silent treatment seems a path not very well chosen for instilling confidence in the minds of potential purchasers of Irex’s new ereader.
Photo courtesy Barnes and Noble
Clichés courtesy Clichés-R-Us 
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Publishers Don’t Like Nook’s Lending Feature no comments
In a post on Medialoper, Kirk Biglione reports that many publishers do not like the lending feature of Barnes and Noble’s nook ereader and do not plan to support it.
The nook’s highly publicized LendMe feature is pretty restrictive. You are only allowed to loan an ebook once and then only for 14 days. Even so, it appears that it may be crippled even further by being available on relatively few titles.
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What’s Next for the Kindle? 1 comment
Barnes and Noble’s nook ereader is arguably the most formidable challenger yet to Amazon’s Kindle. The nook looks good and is slickly designed to be aimed directly at the Kindle’s weaknesses. Amazon needs to respond with some new features if they wish to maintain their current leading position in the increasingly crowded ereader market.
For me, the Kindle’s two strongest features remain:
- Kindle Store: If you discount all of the public domain ebooks at ebook stores such as Barnes and Noble or Sony’s ebook store, the Kindle store has more current and recent titles available. The Kindle store’s prices are almost always lower as well. If you are mainly interested in reading classics found in the public domain or books on the current best seller lists, then these are available at most ebook stores. But if your reading preferences are a bit more esoteric, then your are more likely to find your desired titles in the Kindle store. And yes, you can of course still read the public domain ebooks on the Kindle but you may need to convert them first with a program such as Calibre or email them to Amazon for conversion.
- Wireless browsing: The nook and other new ereaders coming to market have a wireless connection, but so far this is only for purchase and delivery of ebooks. With the Kindle’s imperfect but usable browser you can also research what you are reading about on the internet or even check your email if you need to.
For many ereader shoppers, especially those who walk into a Barnes and Noble store and get to touch and play with a nook, this may well not be enough. To maintain its edge, Amazon needs to upgrade the Kindle’s feature set so that it can again clearly stand out as the best ereader with the most features for the money. Some new features that would help put the shine back on the Kindle:
- EPUB: If EPUB were a supported Kindle format you could access the Google public domain books without conversion. Also the Kindle could claim more openness without forfeiting their proprietary format in the Kindle store. There is a lot of pressure to make the EPUB format a standard across all ereader devices and adding EPUB to the Kindle’s supported formats would surely win Amazon some applause and good will.
- Built-in PDF support: We want PDF document handling that works. This includes things like schematics and equations, etc. that display properly as well as zoom and pan functions. This is especially important for technicians, academics, scientists, etc. who work with a lot of PDF documents. This is more than a niche market. Anyone who has a Kindle ereader even if it is primarily for work will buy ebooks for it. Technically this is not going to be easy to get right and I would imagine that we will see gradual improvements when it comes to handling PDF’s.
- Touchscreen: The nook has a small LCD touchscreen below the e-ink screen for navigation and ebook selection. While it looks really cool, we won’t know until we get to use it how well it actually does the job. The virtual keyboard on the nook’s LCD may well not be as easy to use as the chicklet keyboard on the Kindle. I’m not sure if the Kindle 2 really needs a touchscreen, but the Kindle DX definitely does. I’m not talking about the type of touchscreen the Sony Touch ereader uses with its glare issues. We want Wacom Tablet technology that uses a stylus and doesn’t sacrifice readability. This would make for better study tools which are needed if the Kindle DX is going to go to school. It would also be much more convenient for business use where users need to make annotations, drawings, etc. on their documents.
- Sharing: The nook has a strong new feature that allows you to lend an ebook to a friend for 14 days (if the publisher allows). Each book may only be loaned once. This feature by itself may well swing many purchasers to the nook, even though it is not yet known how many publishers will agree to it. The Kindle allows sharing between Kindles in a family account (usually up to 6 Kindles), but if Amazon can get publishers to agree to a similar plan to the nook’s it would be appealing for many people.
- Public Library Access: The new Sony ereaders come with the ability to check out ebooks from public libraries that are part of the Overdrive system. At the moment this is mainly a feel good feature as most libraries have few titles available. This should change however as demand increases.
- Kindle store support for other devices: Currently you can buy and read ebooks from the Kindle store on iPhone and iPod Touch. Barnes and Noble’s nook adds to this support for Blackberry, PC and Mac computers. Your ebooks and bookmarks are synced across any of these devices and the nook ereader. Amazon is already working on this; a free Kindle ebook reader for PC should be available in November, and Kindle apps for Mac and Blackberry should follow soon thereafter.
- Folders: The Kindle needs a better library management system. We need to be able to arrange our ebooks and documents in folders as we wish, and have the ability to move them easily back and forth between folders as needed. Kindlers have been asking for this one for a long time.
The nook is an attractive and sophisticated looking ereader. Many purchasers will probably be drawn to it just by its good looks. Perhaps it is also time for an appearance upgrade for the Kindle, as long as it doesn’t detract from the primary purpose of the Kindle, which is reading.
With the increasing competition, I think this is more of a must do list than a wish list if Amazon wants to stay on top. What other features do you think are most important? Leave a comment.
