I did what I said I’d never do. I bought an e-reader. I read a large number of books, both hard-back and paper-back, so when the Nook was announced, I decided to check it out. They had good discounts, up to $15 on hardbacks, and about $2 on the paperbacks that I looked at, so I thought that I’d make back the $259 that the Nook would cost in short order. What really sold me was that, unlike the Kindle, the Nook did not use DRM. That means that I can transfer the books that I buy to any compatible device.
What I like
1) No DRM
2) The discounts on the books
3) My local bookstores are terrible about stocking the shelves, so now I don’t have to wait
4) I can loan books to friends who have a Nook or even just download the free reader to their laptops or smartphones
5) It supports MP3’s, so I can load my music library (I’ve not tried this yet, so I like it in theory, not in practice)
6) Unlike the Kindle, it has an expandable memory slot. It supports 1.5 GB as is, but can be expanded with a flash card.
7) I wasn’t sure about the e-ink display, but I like it. It doesn’t glare
8) For those of us over 40 who are starting to need reading glasses, you can adjust the font size easily. I bumped it up to large, and don’t need the glasses.
What I’m Reserving Judgement On
1) I don’t have a smart phone, so I’m not used to the touch screen. I had issues with typing in my password since I use a combo of caps, lower-case, and Numbers, and it’s a long password. It took me 4 tries to get it right.
2) Boot time is several minutes
3) While I’ve not experienced the reported 10-second delay (hard to believe that report) while turning pages, there’s no doubt that there’s a small delay there. So far, it’s about 1/2 second. Not much, but it takes getting used to.
4) Nothing is instantaneous. There’s that 1/2 second lag with just about everything you select. A firmware upgrade should take care of this.
5) The touchscreen at the bottom glows rather brightly for several minutes after you last touched it. If you’ve started reading your book, this glares right into your eyes. I think that there’s a setting to either dim this or make it go off sooner.
What I don’t like
1) I changed some settings, and got to selecting things too fast, and it locked up on me. I tried a reboot, and that took several minutes to even acknowledge that I’d turned the device off. Again, I think a firmware update would help.
2) The directional page turn arrows. The top ones turn the page back, and the bottom ones turn it forward. That’s bizarre. The ones on the right should turn forward and the ones on the left turn backwards.
3) Fingerprints. It’s smudgy. I hate smudges on my cell phone, monitors, tv screen, etc… Now the touch screen gets smudgy. I’ll suck it up and keep a soft cloth with it to clean it.
4) The USB/Power cable is too short. WAY too short. You can use it while it’s plugged in, but if you choose to plug it into an electrical socket, plan on sitting in the floor by the socket.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Good — They have a good packaging engineer. It was easy to open, and unlike some clamshell packages, I didn’t need a knife and a trip to the ER after for stitches to open it.
Bad — Terrible Customer Relationship Management. Barnes and Noble lied to me. They flat out lied. My Nook was supposed to ship on 12/11. On 12/10 I got an email stating that they are shipping soon, and they’re upgrading me to overnight at no additional cost. YIPEE! Next day, I tried tracking my package, and it showed “Not Shipped”. I had to click through several screens on the B&N website on my account to find out that they’d delayed shipping until 12/21.
On 12/21, I checked my account and there was a message that they were cancelling my order unless I clicked a link. No reason given. So, I clicked it, and they changed my shipping date to 1/20/2010, with no explanation. No emails were sent to me either. A friend convinced me to call the 1-800 number and a young lady on the phone told me that they had issues with the website, and on checking my account that it had been picked up by UPS that morning. LIAR.
I got an email 16 hours later that it had shipped and they gave me the tracking number. I checked UPS.com, and they had gotten the billing info, but had not even picked up the package. UPS picked up the package over 24 hours after B&N said it had been picked up.
The Ugly, and I mean U G L Y — When they shipped it, B&N didn’t require a signature on the device. Really… Can they be more stupid? I kept tracking my package, and UPS says they left it on my porch. Uh, No, they didn’t. I called UPS and raised heck, and made them pull the driver and his assistant back from home to find it. They found it rather quickly considering that I had checked with all of my neighbors and they didn’t have it. The package had also been opened. Yes, it had been opened. Incidentally, the UPS driver recognized it was a Nook without me telling him. I think he thought he was going to get an early Christmas Present.
So shame on Barnes and Noble, for shamelessly lying to me, and shame on them for not requiring a signature on delivery.
As far as the rest, after I’ve used it a while longer, we’ll see how I like it. I have high hopes, especially if they fix some of the firmware issues.
edited for incorrect use of to, too, and two
