Archive for the ‘skins’ tag
Kindle 4 – Fourth Generation $79 Kindle ereader – A Brief Review no comments
Amazon has again raised the bar of entry into the ereader market with the release of the first of several new members of the Kindle Family for only $79. This is an amazing ereader in terms of the features it offers for the price — this Kindle is more feature-rich than competing ereaders with price tags that are higher by $50 or more.
This new Kindle makes ereading more affordable to more people. I would expect it to lead to more surges in ebook sales and more surges in revenue at E Ink Holdings, which make its Pearl display. This new price point could prove to be the tipping point that leads to ereaders becoming truly ubiquitous — I wouldn’t be surprised if soon you will be able to pick one up at the minimart while you are filling up your tank.
The basic feature set of the new $79 Kindle is similar to the other Kindle ereaders:
- Three font styles; eight font sizes; adjustable line spacing and words per line.
- Manually adjustable portrait or landscape mode (no accelerometer).
- Annotations: Note taking and highlighting are supported; as are multiple bookmarks. Annotations are archived (can be toggled off) by Amazon and are synced across other Kindle apps and ereaders via Whispersync.
- Organize your library with Collections.
- Share passages on Twitter or Facebook. Option to see public notes and highlights from people you follow at Amazon (for more on this see Amazon’s Public Notes page). View Popular Highlights (can be turned off).
- Optional device password.
- Choice of Oxford English or American dictionary.
- Loan ebooks to friends (with the usual restrictions).
- Borrow ebooks from your public library; library ebooks are temporarily in your archive and can be read on other Kindles or Kindle apps and are kept in sync with Whispersync.
- Email personal documents to your Kindle email address. Amazon now archives these and they become a part of your Kindle library along with any annotations you make.
- Experimental browser.
What differentiates this version of the Kindle 4 from the Kindle Touch or the Kindle 3 (now officially known by Amazon as the Kindle Keyboard) is a shorter battery life, no touchscreen or chiclet keyboard and less memory (but it will still store up to 1,400 ebooks). The $79 Kindle 4 also has no audio capabilities. This means no TTS, no MP3 files and no audiobooks.
Battery life is said to be up to one month with Wi-Fi off; based on my experience this may be just a little optimistic but this will depend on your day-to-day usage. The Kindle 4 ereaders, both the $79 version and the Kindle Touch, now come with only a USB cable sans charger.
The new Kindle has a grayish silver front and back with a graphite edge. In appearance it reminds me somewhat of the Sony Pocket or Sony Touch. It is rather squarish and plain-looking. This Kindle is nowhere near as elegant or aesthetically inspired as the Nook Touch — but hey, it is only $79.
At just under 6 ounces, this is a very lightweight ereader and very easy to hold. The page-turning buttons are on the edges to either side of the screen and are similar to the Kindle 3 page-turning buttons, except that they don’t wrap around to the front of the bezel like those on the Kindle 3 and are a bit harder to use. I didn’t like the page buttons on the new Kindle at first — it took me a while to get used to them and be able to comfortably use this ereader while holding it one-handed.
Update after six weeks of use: The page-turning buttons on the $79 Kindle have never become as comfortable for me to use as those of the Kindle Keyboard. I also have the Kindle Touch, for which I have purchased a cover. This cover also works for the basic Kindle 4 and besides helping to protect the ereader from damage, I find that the page-turning buttons become much easier to use if the ereader is mounted in a cover. If you are having trouble getting used to the buttons try getting a cover.
Complete screen refreshes on this Kindle are usually every sixth page turn, although on some documents the screen will completely refresh with every new page. This results in less of the flash to black that e-ink screens are known for. Yes, I have noticed some slight ghosting, but it does not seem a serious issue to me. Still, I wish both Amazon and Barnes & Noble would follow Kobo’s lead and offer users an option to select a more frequent complete refresh if ghosting does become annoying.
I’ve also noticed that on a few occasions the font seems to be a little fuzzy and not as sharp as on the Kindle Keyboard. I didn’t notice this often, and so it did not become a serious issue for me.
Update 10/13/2011: Amazon has released a software update for the Kindle 4 that lets you elect to have the display completely refresh itself every single page turn instead of every sixth page turn.
So should you buy the $79 Kindle?
There is no denying that at $79 this Kindle gives you more bang for your ereading buck than any other ereader out there. With the loss of the chiclet keyboard the new Kindle ereaders are also smaller, lighter and more portable than the last generation. Still, I have to say that I personally prefer reading on my Kindle 3.
Primarily this is because of the paging buttons. While I did become more or less used to these, they never became as comfortable to use as those on the Kindle 3 (see my update above). I also prefer the design and the darker bezel of the Kindle 3, which improves the perceived contrast of the screen.
For the money this is a great ereader and I don’t think you will have regrets if you buy one — you certainly won’t have sticker shock. But if you can wait for a bit and spend another $20 you can get the Kindle Touch, which will eliminate my one complaint about the Kindle 4 ereader — the page-turning buttons. It will also come with more memory, longer battery life and audio features.
If you do a lot of note taking or otherwise need to use the keyboard frequently, the hunt and peck virtual keyboard on the $79 Kindle will probably become annoying very fast. Typing on the Kindle Touch should be much easier.
The Kindle Touch will also include Amazon’s new X-Ray feature, which apparently will not be available on the $79 Kindle. X-Ray will let you see all of the passages in a book that mention certain ideas, characters, places or other topics. This looks like a really interesting and useful new feature.
Then there is still the Kindle 3 — aka Kindle Keyboard — which is now available for $99. This has not been displaced as my favorite ereader by the Kindle 4. Every time I come back to the Kindle Keyboard after using another ereader — even the Nook Touch, which I really like as well — I am again impressed by how much I enjoy reading on it. I hope Amazon will continue to offer the Kindle 3, because it is a classic.
The new $79 Kindle 4 is now available to purchase at Amazon and will soon be available at Amazon’s usual retail partners as well. Also available in the UK for £89.
Covers and cases for the $79 Kindle
Amazon has a selection of covers, both lighted and unlighted for the new Kindle. At this time these are mostly pre-order, but should be shipping by mid-November. There are a few covers from Verso, Belkin and Marware in addition to the official Kindle covers from Amazon. The picture is for the Prologue Antique Kindle Cover from Verso priced at $39.99.
I like a darker bezel on my ereaders as this improves the perceived contrast. A device skin is a good way to achieve this. DecalGirlalready has skins with over 100 design choices for the Kindle 4. Use the coupon code DECAL10 at checkout for a 10% discount at DecalGirl. I would recommend the matte finish skin as it feels better in your hands and looks even nicer.
You can also now find skins for the Kindle 4 at SkinIt. For a 15% discount at SkinIt use coupon code SKINITSAVER15 at checkout. This coupon will be good until Jan 1, 2012.
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Barnes & Noble All New Nook Touch ereader – unboxing & review 3 comments
The official name of Barnes & Noble’s newest ereader offering is the All-New Nook, The Simple Reader. For those of us who do not work in B&N’s marketing department this is rather a mouthful, so for brevity’s sake I’ll refer to the new ereader here as the Nook Touch.
The Simple Touch Reader is, in fact, a very apt name. The new Nook is very simple — elegantly so — and is focused squarely on reading Nook Books; a task at which it excels. It also features a very nice IR-based touchscreen from Neonode that is quite responsive and optically clear, with no glare or other ill effects on the reading experience.
Everything about the Nook Touch, even the packaging, seems focused on making it functional and practical while also being simple and intuitive to use. When I first opened the outer packaging I was rather surprised by the small size of the box the new ereader came in. The box has two compartments. The larger compartment, when the lid is lifted, reveals the Nook Touch nestled in its foam bed. A smaller section at the foot of the box houses the AC adaptor and a USB cable.
My Nook arrived with an 85 percent charge in its battery. I plugged it in to top the battery off while I read the quick start guide. Next came connecting to my Wi-Fi network and then my account at B&N. All of this went very smoothly. If you don’t have an existing account at B&N you will need to establish one, which will require a credit card.
I have to admit to being somewhat disappointed when I first saw photos of B&N’s new ereader. It appeared to be rather plain and uninspired. This is an ereader that is hard to photograph in a way that does it justice. So until you meet one in person you will just have to take my word for it that there is nothing plain about the Nook Touch. It features an understated design that appears to be well constructed of quality materials, which give it a quite sophisticated and elegant look and feel when seen in the flesh.
The Nook Touch feels very comfortable in one’s hands. The bezel and back are coated in a non-slip rubberized finish. Rather than just being flat, the back of the ereader is indented in the center, which provides a comfortable grip for one’s fingers. The Nook Touch looks and feels quite well made and appears durable to me.
The power button is on the back of the ereader. On the right edge there is a micro SD card slot and the USB port is on the bottom edge. The familiar Nook button is found below the screen on the bezel. To either side of the screen are two sets of page turning buttons. These just look like lines in the photos, as they are just raised ridges a little over an inch tall and about a sixteenth of an inch wide.
I’m still undecided as to whether or not I like the page-turning buttons. I like the fact that B&N has included buttons on both sides of the bezel even though the touchscreen works well for turning pages. This gives you more options and ways to hold the ereader. But these buttons do take some getting used to because they are so unusual. They also seem to require a quite firm press. They are aesthetically pleasing and do fit in with the minimalist design of the Nook Touch, while also appearing to be quite durable. In any case, I mostly use the touchscreen for flipping pages. On the Nook Touch this is accomplished with either a swipe or a tap at the edge of the screen.
Pressing the Nook button on the front bezel wakes the Nook Touch and provides a slider at the bottom of the screen that you drag to unlock the ereader. The ereader’s home screen displays the ebook you are currently reading along with the number of pages you have read in a box in the upper left corner. To the right a few of the newest additions to your library are listed and along the bottom of the home screen is a strip of recommendations from B&N.
Pressing the Nook button once the Nook Touch is awake pulls up a Quick Nav Bar at the bottom of the screen. From here you can quickly go to the device’s settings, search the device, shop the B&N store, reach the Home screen or your Library. The search function on the Nook Touch will vary depending on where you are. If you search while in the library the tool will first search the library and then the B&N store.
While reading a book you tap the center of the page to bring up the reading tools. This is a toolbar that appears at the bottom of the page and provides the following functions:
- Content — Table of contents and your notes, highlights and bookmarks.
- Find — For searching within the book.
- Go To — Go to a particular page, also contains a page slider for quick navigation and a Go Back button.
- Font button to adjust page and font settings.
- More — Opens a page with more info on the book, including links to reviews and related titles. Also provides a Share button to access some of the social reading features of the Nook Touch. You can also archive a book from this page to save space on your ereader.
The Nook Touch gives you seven different font sizes and six font styles to choose from. You can also adjust line spacing and the margin size. The largest font on the Nook Touch is not as large as the Kindle 3’s largest font size, so it may not work as well for those with visual impairments.
Tapping the center of the screen also brings up a Status Bar at the top of the screen that displays small icons showing battery charge, Wi-Fi status and a clock. If you are in your library or the home screen the status bar will show a small open book icon. Tapping on this takes you back to what you were last reading. A swipe to the left on the status bar acts like a back button. This is a very useful feature, especially as it can be used multiple times to take you back multiple steps.
Adding bookmarks and annotations is made very quick and easy by a touchscreen. To add or remove a bookmark just requires a tap in the upper right corner. If you tap and hold a word you get a toolbar with options to look the word up in the built-in dictionary (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) or make a note or highlight. You can also select a passage to share on Twitter, Facebook or with your email contacts.
All of the settings and controls for the ereader are easily and quickly available from just about anywhere. The excellent touchscreen of the Nook Touch makes accessing and using these features simple and convenient. Navigation around the ereader will be very easy to learn, even if you’ve never used an ereader before.
The library of the Nook Touch lets you display your ebooks as thumbnails or in a list with details. You can sort ebooks by Most Recent, Author or Title. You can also choose to view all items, books only, periodicals, LendMe Nook books that you have borrowed or loaned, your files or your shelves. Shelves are like categories — you can create and name new shelves as you wish and organize your ebooks onto them. Ebooks can be on more than one shelf at a time.
Adobe Digital Editions immediately recognized my Nook Touch and authorized it with no problems. I was then able to use ADE to transfer ebooks purchased from Kobo or elsewhere onto the ereader and open them. You should be able to sideload ePub books you purchase from ebookstores other than B&N quite easily, but you will need to use Adobe DE if they have DRM.
I’ve also tried a few PDF documents on the Nook Touch. It is fine for reading non-scanned documents or books in PDF format. Graphs, schematics and other graphics were lost in in the reflow when I changed the font size. For reading PDFs with graphics you would be better served by an ereader that features a pan and zoom function, such as the Kindle 3 or one of the Sony ereaders. 
The Nook Touch comes with two sets of screen savers: Dead author portraits and nature scenes. The dead author portraits are somewhat more stylized than those of the Kindle, while the nature scenes are landscape photographs that seemed rather blah to me. Photos tend to look rather boring to me on an e-ink screen. Pen and ink drawings and illustrations are a different matter. For the nature selection I think B&N would have done better using natural history type illustrations. The Kindle 3 tosses in a few illustrations of dead birds and fish with the authors that are quite nice. You can also load your own pictures onto the Nook Touch to use as screen savers.
I have not really noticed a significant difference between the Pearl e-ink displays of the Nook Touch and the Kindle 3 or the Sony Touch when viewing a static page of text. There is a difference in the refresh of the e-ink screen that happens when you turn the pages on the Nook Touch however.
When turning pages the Nook Touch does not seem to refresh the e-ink display as completely as other ereaders with every page turn. This results in less of the black flash that usually occurs when you flip pages on an e-ink based ereader. Every sixth page the Nook Touch does a more thorough refresh, which then results in the familiar black flash.
This results in page turns that are cleaner and will probably be more attractive to new users of e-ink displays. But there are a couple of negative consequences from the manner in which this ereader turns pages. Firstly, most users quickly get used to the black flash and don’t notice it anymore. This may be more difficult if the flash occurs intermittently, though it does not seem an issue to me.
More importantly, I have noticed some ghosting with my Nook Touch’s display. It is not always present, and it is faint when it is — but it is sometimes there. This is probably due to the way in which this ereader refreshes the screen.
On the whole I really like the Nook Touch and am quite impressed with Barnes & Noble’s latest ereader. It is a pleasure to read on, simple to use, and the small size and light weight will make it very portable. The Nook Touch and its feature set also somehow feel to me like the perfect counterpoint for its shelf mate and bigger sibling, the Nook Color.
However, there are a few things that this ereader cannot do or that might be annoying that you should know about before you buy one. To me, none of these are serious enough to dissuade me from buying the Nook Touch (or keeping mine now that I’ve already bought it). But some users might feel differently.
- The Nook Touch does not do landscape mode. Period. In most cases this will not bother me, but sometimes you can get a bit of enlargement for a graphic or page in a PDF document by displaying it in landscape mode. UPDATE: There is the option to show web pages in landscape mode in the hidden browser (see below).
- The display sometimes suffers from faint ghosting — occasionally there are faint afterimages of lines of text or images from previous pages. After a few page refreshes the artifacts disappear. I noted above that the Nook Touch sometimes shows less of the black flash that is typical when e-ink displays are refreshed. Perhaps the occasional ghosting is the price paid. In any case it is very faint, is not always present and goes away after several page turns. I am very much able to live with this issue, but it might prove to be rather annoying to some users.
- No web browser. This one irks me less than it would have a year or two ago. Most of us have other mobile devices that are much more adroit at surfing the web and checking email than an e-ink based ereader. Still, it is nice to have the ability should you need it, and being able to look up words or topics from your reading on Wikipedia or Google without pulling out a second device is a nice asset. I imagine this is something B&N may well be adding in a firmware update. Indeed, a
inactivatedweb browser has been discovered lurking in the Nook Touch’s code. Probably it was not ready for prime time yet when the Nook Touch was released. UPDATE: I was incorrect in saying that the browser is inactivated. It is undocumented, but as reader E points out, if you type a web address into the search field it will open. The browser’s functionality does not seem to always be 100 percent — probably this is why B&N kept it hidden.
Again, for me these issues are more than outweighed by the qualities of the Nook Touch. It is amazing how far B&N has come from the rushed and somewhat clumsy launch of the original Nook ereader. Obviously the company is aggressively trying to improve the quality of both its service and its products. If Borders had made half as much effort it would probably not be where it is now.
Nook Touch vs Kindle 3
I’ve always been a Kindle fan. At the same time I don’t think it is good for us consumers when a single company dominates an entire market. I doubt the Kindle 3 would be as good as it is without the competition from Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others. For similar reasons I keep hoping for a viable iPad competitor.
The Kindle 3 does have some very serious competition in the Nook Touch. The Kindle 3 is more versatile and has more capabilities, but I think that Barnes & Noble has managed to put most of the features that most users will want in a very attractive and easy-to-use package. The Nook Touch is very focused on reading Nook Books — and it does this very well. Which ereader will be best for you will depend on your needs.
I also find that I like using a touchscreen on an ereader — I have and enjoy using the Sony Touch, which has an IR-based touchscreen from Neonode like the Nook Touch does. A touchscreen, when well implemented, is faster and easier to use than the 5-way controller of the Kindle ereaders in my opinion. I will be really surprised if the Kindle 4, whenever it arrives, does not eschew the chiclet keyboard in favor of a touchscreen and virtual keyboard.
Because of its intuitive ease of use I think the Nook Touch will be the ideal ereader for those who are not fascinated by new technology and don’t think that it is great fun to spend time with a new gadget learning how to set it up and use it properly. The learning curve for this ereader is a very small one indeed.
Of course, one of the biggest features of the Kindle ereaders is the Kindle Store itself and this continues to be a big advantage for Amazon. I purchase ebooks from Barnes & Noble, Kobo and even the Sony Reader Store; but I purchase the majority of my ebooks from the Kindle Store. Even though the Nook Book store has come a long way, in my experience I am more likely to find the title I am looking for in a digital format at Amazon and personally I still like the shopping experience there best.
I am fortunate to have both the Kindle 3 and the Nook Touch. If I could keep only one and were forced to make a choice between them I would choose to keep the Kindle 3 because of the access to the Kindle Store that it provides. But it would not be a happy choice, and I would much regret the loss of my new Nook Touch.
Nice job Barnes & Noble!
The Nook Touch is available for $139 with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.
Nook Touch covers & cases
Barnes & Noble of course has a selection of covers for their new ereader, but there are a few aftermarket covers and cases starting to appear as well.
CaseCrown makes zippered sleeves
TrendyDigital makes its WaterGuard Waterproof Case for the Nook Touch. This costs $15.99 or $19.99 for the model with padding and heavier duty detachable straps.
Gizmo Dorks
Mivizu makes a leather case for the Nook Touch that features an integrated stand and a flip top. Priced at $25.85.
DecalGirl has skins for the Nook Touch. Currently there are around 100 different designs to choose from. Each design also comes with a downloadable wallpaper that continues the design across the ereader’s screen. DecalGirl charges $14.99 for skins to fit the Nook Touch, and a matte finish (which I recommend) is another $3. You can use coupon code Decal10 to get a 10 percent discount at DecalGirl.
SkinItalso now has a large selection of skins for the Nook Touch ereader. Skinit device skins tend to be more expensive ($29.99 for Nook Touch skins), but the company does have a lot of unique designs. These include everything from movie and music themed skins to sports and collegiate themes.
Skinit has a 15 percent off discount coupon code — SKINITSAVER15 — that is good throughout 2011.
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Barnes & Noble Nook Color Review (Updated) no comments
Note: I’ve updated my original review to reflect the version 1.2 firmware update from Barnes & Noble that upgraded the Nook Color ereader to Froyo and made it even more tablet-like. Most of the problems that I noted in my original review seem to have been fixed or at least improved. 
This update has really upgraded the Nook Color from being a good ereader to a great one.
* * *
One of the first things to do upon unpacking my new Nook Color is to connect to Barnes & Noble. I had to try several times to successfully connect to my Wi-Fi network, but once connected initially it has seemed to stay faithfully connected with only one exception. On that occasion I just had to tap a button to reconnect after waking the ereader.
To wake the Nook Color you need to drag the screen lock across the bottom of the screen. The home screen has three panels where you can arrange books, periodicals and documents as you like. You can even stack multiple books and periodicals on top of one another (kind of like my office). If it gets too messy, the Nook Color can also clean up and neatly arrange the items on the home screen after a double tap on the screen.
There is a side-scrolling strip across the bottom of the home screen called the Daily Shelf that holds recently added or read books and periodicals as well as recently used and added apps. You can arrange your titles as you like on the Daily Shelf and move them back and forth to the panels above. There is a Keep Reading button at the top of the home screen that will return you to your most recent read. There is also a More button, a tap upon which results in a drop-down list of several titles you have recently been reading.
The library of the Nook Color arranges your titles on 
bookshelves. You can sort by type of material — books, magazines or newspapers. You can create new shelves to sort your ebooks onto. This effectively works like categories or folders. If you prefer you can ditch the shelves and view your library as a list. You can sort your titles by Author, Title or Most Recent. To save space on the ereader books can be archived (removed from the device but stored in the cloud) and this is also where you will find a handy file explorer tool.
Nook Books will sync across different Nook devices and apps. Besides the Nook Color I have the Nook Touch ereader and apps on my iPad, Android phone and tablet. They all sync to my last read page as long as the Wi-Fi or 3G is connected.
One thing that is not so nice is that ebooks that were not purchased from B&N don’t seem to show the cover art while resting on the shelves of the library — just a generic gray cover with the title, at least in the case of the titles I have on my ereader.
The only hard navigational control on the Nook Color is the Nook symbol just below the screen. This is used to wake up the Nook Color when it is sleeping or, if the ereader is already awake, this button takes you to the home screen.
As long as the Nook Color is not sleeping there is a virtual button at the bottom of the screen that brings up the Quick Nav Bar. This contains icons for Library, Shop, Search, Apps, Web and Settings.
The App button takes you to a page where you can access the built-in apps of the Nook Color. These include Chess, Contacts, Crossword, Email, Gallery, Music, Nook Friends (B&N’s social ereading platform), Pandora and Sudoku. You can also go to the B&N store from here to buy more apps. Currently there are several hundred apps available (both paid and free) of all different types.
Using the Email app you can quickly and easily set up the Nook Color to send and receive your email over the Wi-Fi connection. I have email accounts with Yahoo, MSN and Gmail — the Nook Color was able to readily connect with all. You can view individual mailboxes or view messages from all accounts in a unified inbox.
The Settings button lets you access the device settings from anywhere, regardless of what you are doing on the ereader at the moment. This is as it should be — you should not have to close your book and go back to the home screen in order to change some setting or other. Overall I think B&N has done an excellent job on the navigation and the integration of the touchscreen on the Nook Color.
If, in your reading, you tap on a link to a web page in the text the browser will open and take you to the appropriate site. When you are finished you can tap on a small open book icon on the status bar to get back to your reading. This open book icon is usually present when you are doing something other than reading and is a quick way to go back to your last read.
That is not the only way to go back. Swiping to the left on the status bar serves as a back button and will take you back to whatever you were last doing. This function has a long memory — multiple swipes will take you back multiple steps.
Tap the center of the screen while reading and you get a reading tool bar with buttons for Content (lists TOC and your notes, highlights and bookmarks), Search, Share (Facebook, Twitter, via email to Gmail contacts), Text (font style and size — six choices for each; background/font color; line spacing and margin options) and a Brightness control. Basically, all of the controls you might need to access while reading are accessible without leaving the page you are reading.
Study tools are good. Simple tap in the upper right corner to add or remove a bookmark. To add a highlight and/or a note just tap a word and hold. This gives you a tool bar for these functions as well as the option to look up a word in the dictionary or online. Again, B&N has really done an excellent job of showing how to implement a touchscreen on an ereader.
The color LCD screen of the Nook Color is gorgeous. 
The VividView screen with ISP from LG Display is capable of displaying over 16 million colors and has a resolution of 1024 x 600. It is sharp and has a very wide field of view. Although the display of the Nook Color does seem a tad better than the iPad when outdoors, this is still not a good choice for reading at the beach. It is possible to see enough to read when outdoors, but the experience will not be pleasant.
I do prefer reading ebooks on e-ink rather than on backlit LCD displays (see LCD vs e-Ink). I suffer eyestrain if I read for a long time on a portable backlit screen. But the Nook Color has many choices for changing the background and text colors. I find that if I turn the brightness down and use the grey or black background setting I can read on it for quite a while with no ill effect. If you read for really long periods or if you plan to read a lot while out of doors, e-ink might be a better choice.
When I first received my Nook Color ereader, I noticed that in certain applications — most notably the Crossword app — the touchscreen was not responsive at the edges of the screen. This was very frustrating at times. This problem became less severe after an earlier software update, and I am happy to report that it is no longer an issue after the Froyo update. I now have no complaints with the touchscreen of the Nook Color — it is very fast and responsive.
When reading PDF files you can use pinch to zoom and pan around the page. Enlarging the page does not loose graphics in the files that I tried. The Nook Color handles zooming in and out and panning around PDF documents pretty quickly.
I did find a few problems related to handling PDF files, however. Firstly, page turning does not work the same with PDF files as it does with Nook Books. You have to swipe vertically to flip pages rather than horizontally as with a regular ebook. While this is not really a problem, it is confusing.
More troubling is that, at least with the PDF files I tried, you cannot manually add a bookmark and this ereader does not seem to be able to remember your last-read page in PDF documents. This means each time you open a PDF file you start at the cover. Most annoying if a lot of your reading is done on PDFs. The little open book icon also does not seem to work to take you back to a PDF document. Nor can you make annotations in PDFs.
In my initial impressions of the Nook Color post I said that the speaker was not very loud. I think this was in large part due to the poor volume of the web-based video I was watching. In fact, the speaker system is not as loud as the iPad’s, but should suffice in areas with little or no ambient noise. Unlike the iPad, which has a rounded back, the back panel of the Nook Color is flat. This means that if you have it sitting on a table or something the speaker is somewhat muffled.
I fired up the Pandora app (very nice!) and plugged in a set of Shure E500 earbuds and the sound volume and quality was quite good. The Pandora app and the music player will play in the background while you are reading.
The web browser on the Nook Color has been much improved since the ereader was first released. Pinch to zoom is now enabled. You can open additional windows and you can set the browser to be recognized as a mobile device or open webpages in desktop mode.
YouTube videos are also now much better on the Nook Color after the updates. They are now much sharper and rotate quickly between landscape and portrait views.
The Nook Color has an accelerometer, so it is capable of changing screen orientation automatically. When reading NookBooks, however, you can only read in portrait mode. One problem with this is that if there is a chart or some sort of graphic that is too small to see properly you cannot switch to landscape mode to achieve some enlargement. I wish B&N would unlock the orientation in the NookBook reader. You can read PDF files in landscape mode.
Magazines work quite nicely on the Nook Color. There is a page mode, in which pinch to zoom works, as well as an article mode, which is better for reading longish articles sans most of the graphics. Tapping on the center of the screen brings up a slider of page thumbnails at the bottom of the display that is handy for quickly navigating through a magazine. The Barnes & Noble Nook Newsstand has more digital magazines than most other ebookstores and magazines are identical to the paper versions.
I think that the Nook Color will make a good, 
albeit expensive, children’s ebook reader when combined with Nook Kids — B&N’s NookBook store for children. B&N is constantly growing this section of the store and children’s Nook Books work quite well on the Nook Color.
One advantage over the few dedicated children’s ereaders out there is that young readers won’t outgrow this one as their reading advances out of the picture book stage.
The Nook Color – Should You Buy One? – My Take
The firmware updates that B&N has supplied have rendered most of my previous complaints about the Nook Color ereader moot.
The Nook Color is something more than an ereader and something less than a tablet. The recent update to Froyo has made it more tablet-like. The Nook Color has already been rooted, so you could have a $250 Android tablet if you choose to go this route. Rooted Nook Color ereaders can get Kindle and other ereading apps. You can find out more about rooting the Nook Color at the XDA forums and NookDevs.
But even without rooting, the Nook Color seems much more functional to me than many of the cheaper Android tablets. There is no access to the Android Market, but B&N’s app store is growing. If one of the main purposes you plan on using a tablet for is ereading, then the Nook Color is an excellent choice.
The Nook Color is currently priced at $249 at Barnes & Noble.
Nook Color covers, cases and skins
B&N
has its own selection of covers and there is also a growing selection of third party Nook Color covers
For protection against splashes TrendyDigital has its waterproof covers available in a size for the Nook Color.
For shock protection Otterbox makes its Commuter Case in a size to fit the Nook Color.
DecalGirlhas a selection of skins to fit the Nook Color that include a downloadable matching wallpaper. I recommend the matte finish — it not only looks better but feels better. Decal10 is a discount coupon code that will give a 10 percent discount at DecalGirl.
SkinItalso has a number of skins for the Nook Color ereader. Coupon code skinitsaver15 will give you a 15 percent discount on any Skinit device skin throughout 2011.
Possibly Related Posts:
Cole Haan Kindle 2 Covers on Sale no comments
Amazon is again selling several different styles of Cole Haan Kindle 2 covers
I imagine that as manufacturers try to get rid of their stock of covers and cases for the Kindle 2 we will be seeing more discounted prices.
I’m guessing that we probably won’t see any Kindle 3 covers other than the official covers from Amazon for a month or two after the new Kindle is released. I imagine that the cover manufacturers, like us, have to wait until it ships to get their hands on the new model so that they can fit it. The same will apply to skins for the Kindle 3.
The Amazon covers for the Kindle 3 actually do look pretty nice. I especially like the way that the integrated light draws power from the Kindle battery. Having one less thing to replace the batteries of will be more convenient, especially when traveling.
£149.00
£109
