MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Classic A new Kindle user's take on the nook

tautologico · 10-27-2009, 06:07 PM

Hi, I bought a Kindle 2 (international) recently and already read a good number of useful posts here on this forum, so I registered.

Anyway, yesterday and today I was reading about the nook. At first the announced features almost made me regret the kindle purchase, but now, after reading the posts here clarifying some points, I'm seeing that the nook is not significantly better than the kindle as I thought. (Nevermind that the nook is not available internationally, this would be a nuisance).

The features that caught my eye were:

Native PDF support
Larger catalog (1 million according to B&N)
Support to book lending

Some of the other features were less compelling, only slightly useful or almost useless. But then I found some additional facts in these forums:

You can't zoom on PDFs. Coupled with the small screen size, it'll probably make PDFs unreadable, and that's why I'd like to get a Kindle DX.
Book lending has the limits already talked about: only once and only for 14 days. I wanted this feature mostly to trade books with my girlfriend so we didn't need to buy some books twice, but she reads more slowly and I don't always have time to read, so the 14-days limitation makes this feature nearly useless for me.

And the less compelling features are not game changers for me:

SD Card: nice to have, but not that important. I can unload books I don't want to read in the near future to my PC or just re-download them later from Amazon if I want to read them. 2Gb is good enough to carry the books I'm currently reading or plan to read in the near future.
LCD touchscreen: navigation in the Kindle could be improved, but the sore point of this for me is having to move a lot using the 5-way to get to a word (to highlight, add a note or search for a definition), and the partial touchscreen in the nook doesn't solve this. The Sony devices which are all touchscreen improve navigation but at the cost of readability, and this I don't like.

So what remains is the larger catalog. However, we'll have to see, because it doesn't make much sense for publishers to sell their ebooks through just one vendor, when they can make them available to others for very little cost. So I won't be surprised if shortly after the nook's release the catalogs of Amazon and B&N have almost the same size. However, if this doesn't change, then it is a serious problem for the Kindle.

Anyway, I think competition is good for everyone that likes eReaders, and if things go on at this pace soon we'll all have better devices than the current ones.

10-27-2009, 06:07 PM	#1
tautologico Member Posts: 22 Karma: 50 Join Date: Oct 2009 Device: Kindle 2 International	A new Kindle user's take on the nook Hi, I bought a Kindle 2 (international) recently and already read a good number of useful posts here on this forum, so I registered. Anyway, yesterday and today I was reading about the nook. At first the announced features almost made me regret the kindle purchase, but now, after reading the posts here clarifying some points, I'm seeing that the nook is not significantly better than the kindle as I thought. (Nevermind that the nook is not available internationally, this would be a nuisance). The features that caught my eye were: Native PDF support Larger catalog (1 million according to B&N) Support to book lending Some of the other features were less compelling, only slightly useful or almost useless. But then I found some additional facts in these forums: You can't zoom on PDFs. Coupled with the small screen size, it'll probably make PDFs unreadable, and that's why I'd like to get a Kindle DX. Book lending has the limits already talked about: only once and only for 14 days. I wanted this feature mostly to trade books with my girlfriend so we didn't need to buy some books twice, but she reads more slowly and I don't always have time to read, so the 14-days limitation makes this feature nearly useless for me. And the less compelling features are not game changers for me: SD Card: nice to have, but not that important. I can unload books I don't want to read in the near future to my PC or just re-download them later from Amazon if I want to read them. 2Gb is good enough to carry the books I'm currently reading or plan to read in the near future. LCD touchscreen: navigation in the Kindle could be improved, but the sore point of this for me is having to move a lot using the 5-way to get to a word (to highlight, add a note or search for a definition), and the partial touchscreen in the nook doesn't solve this. The Sony devices which are all touchscreen improve navigation but at the cost of readability, and this I don't like. So what remains is the larger catalog. However, we'll have to see, because it doesn't make much sense for publishers to sell their ebooks through just one vendor, when they can make them available to others for very little cost. So I won't be surprised if shortly after the nook's release the catalogs of Amazon and B&N have almost the same size. However, if this doesn't change, then it is a serious problem for the Kindle. Anyway, I think competition is good for everyone that likes eReaders, and if things go on at this pace soon we'll all have better devices than the current ones.