The below clears up a couple of the original ZDNet blogger Mitch Ratcliffe's misconceptions, specifically his assumptions as to Nook's WiFi capabilities.
The below follow-up article is by his co-blogger, Matthew Miller, and is to specific questions as answered by Barnes & Noble:
"B&N Nook beats Amazon Kindle & Sony Reader, here's why"
"I posted yesterday about the Barnes & Noble Nook and then read
Mitch Ratcliffe's post where he primarily focused on the apparent limited use of WiFi. I just posed a couple of questions on the Nook press call and have to now tell Mitch he is wrong about the WiFi access, but he should actually be quite pleased since there are no limits. I confirmed that you can access and purchase books via both WiFi and AT&T 3G from any place where you have access to a network, including your home WiFi network. One point of clarification regarding travel overseas. You can download books from you current library collection via WiFi overseas, but due to licensing issues you cannot browse the store and purchase new content when outside the US (yet). The Barnes & Noble store experience is just an enhanced experience that presents you with free content and also allows you to browse through books, just like you can physically in the bookstore. As I said yesterday, the Nook is a revolutionary product in the ebook market for a number of reasons."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=2101