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Nook Christmas? Yes. Which will be a curse word hereafter. At least my husband is speaking to me again after he sulked for a few hours. He tried to use the Nook, was barely restrained from throwing it out the door, and wanted to go buy me a Kindle to replace it. We can't afford a Kindle and couldn't really afford this techno-brick, so failure is not an option. B&N tells me there's nothing wrong with this one and that they only gave it a 14-day warranty, or they'd have had it back in the mail yesterday. I refuse to have an expensive brick doorstop and I WILL make this thing work somehow.
Background on me: 52, no close vision problems, highly light-sensitive eyes. I have used computers in one form or another since 1975 and, while hardly a hacker, generally know when something is acting screwy. I have used several e-reader programs over the years and have been using an iPod Touch with Stanza in night mode for bedtime reading so DH isn't awakened by light in the room. I like it and haven't had any significant problems with any of the Project Gutenberg downloads I use. I don't read many novels, seldom look at anything graphics-intensive, and pick most old texts up as .txt files to save space since the formatting is nothing special.
Problem 1: I understand that B&N was down most of the weekend. Yesterday, I was able to get online for a few minutes at a time from our home wifi, but most websites timed out because it's WildBlue satellite and that's apparently too slow for the Nook(!--isn't that about like something being too slow for a snail?) 3G doesn't work here. B&N says to use their site, bring the Nook to their store. The nearest one is an hour and a half away and I would need to rent a car to get there. If the middle of the night is the only option, I'll use it, but I will not be happy.
Problem 2: Is everyone's display excruciatingly slow? I can usually finish an easy sudoku in two minutes. When I finally got the Nook to stay on long enough to play, it took almost half an hour, most of it in wait time while the screen redrew. I set the sleep time for ten minutes, but it turns off the touchscreen after a few seconds and the whole thing in two minutes. (Yes, it charged overnight before I tried to use it.) The user manual is the only thing with more than one page, and it's very....very....slow...to...display...and...even.. .slower...to...turn.
Problem 3: Charcoal gray on khaki is the normal screen color scheme according to tech support. It's "so you can read in the sun on your lunch hour". I work from home, and "sun" and "lunch hour" will not mean much in the dark Ohio rainforest until next spring, if then. Remember the light-sensitive eyes? I can barely see the print. This is Perfectly Normal according to B&N. The suggested cure is a booklight. Um, that's why I don't read dead trees in bed: the light wakes up my husband.
This is not fun. I need some better ideas, please.
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