Classic Nook 1.5 Update Confirmed

[spec]

Originally Posted by boswd

well let's not do any 'the sky is falling" just yet.

It did say it was going to be it's largest firmware update. I wouldn't doubt it if the non bn content was included.

I got the Droid X and I have the Nook app so this should be fun to see the updates on that this week.

I completely agree here. I recall one of the previous' updates major feature was supposed to be faster page turns and most people didn't see a difference or the difference was negligible. The news is still pretty vague. What if B&N library organization sucks to the point people will be saying "I'm glad they didn't do that to My Documents"?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by spec

I dont have a gold card and I have that. I have a regular cc, nothing fancy, no annual fee. The person just has to call their bank

http://www.mastercard.com/us/persona...its/index.html

That's good. I know at one time it used to be that way, but haven't checked into it for ages.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

The (apparent) decision to not merge the My Docs with the B&N library, or upgrade the My Docs management was a lousy customer service decision...but a pretty smart business decision.
I know it sucks, but they have to have some sort of enticement for you to buy your ebooks from B&N. If the sideloaded contents are a pain in the neck to organize, then eventually people are going to think, "Oh, I'll just get it from B&N so it'll be easier to handle."
Assuming, of course that the title they want is available from B&N.
Sony doesn't do this because the bookstore isn't their main thing, like it is for B&N.

*the above is only my opinion*

I agree.

B&N would like to buy your e-books from their store, not other bookstores.
Amazon solved this problem by making it impossible to buy DRM content from other bookstores, by just supporting its own DRM format.
B&N supports the Abobe ePub DRM so you can buy books at other bookstores and has even licensed its own DRM to Adobe so other bookstores and e-readers are allowed to use it, so they need an other way to make you buy books at their store. They do this by making buying books at their store more attractive because it is easier to do, and you get extra features that you do not get with books from other bookstores.

I like the fact that unlike Amazon B&N has chosen to support books from other bookstores, and I cannot fault them for trying to promote their own bookstore.

[spec]

Originally Posted by geertm

I like the fact that unlike Amazon B&N has chosen to support books from other bookstores, and I cannot fault them for trying to promote their own bookstore.

... and support ebooks from overdrive based libraries. A bit plus for me as well. Only Kindle 1 had SD card slot which tells you where amazon is going. Also no LendMe. I would still pick nook over any kindle.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by spec

I disagree regarding battery life, I think it's actually pretty good. The batteries that b&n sells are not spares, they are replacements (if your battery doesnt hold charge anymore). That's at least the way I understand it.

What makes you think nook 2 is going to come out in color that is going to be your favorite color then? I dont even know how to respond to that - this is probably the first time I'm hearing someone is not buying nook because of its color and calls color a feature.

I need the battery to last much longer than it does now for trips to remote locations without power sources. Nook is rated at 10 days and Kindle at 4 weeks. I don't want to buy a spare battery if I don't have to.

The white bezel is a severe distraction and bothers my eyes because of increased light reflection. Lack of a black body would force me to spend $20 for a black skin to cover it up. Kindle came out in black, Kobo came out in black; so Nook can come out in black.

Otherwise, the Nook's hardware is fine.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I am afraid we are again being denied the abliity to organize non-B&N content. Which is by and large what MOST people were begging for in the forums: not so much the need to organize B&N content, but the ability to organize all grandfathered content that we had from other sources.

What type of organization are you looking for? Why isn't title and author search sufficient?

[Nahgem]

Because clicking through twenty pages to find a book because the title/author's name comes at the end of the alphabet is a pain. Ideally, I'd like some sort of folder/tag system for organization, but even having the same search function in the My Documents that the B&N Documents menu has would be a huge help.

[spec]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I need the battery to last much longer than it does now for trips to remote locations without power sources. Nook is rated at 10 days and Kindle at 4 weeks. I don't want to buy a spare battery if I don't have to.

The white bezel is a severe distraction and bothers my eyes because of increased light reflection. Lack of a black body would force me to spend $20 for a black skin to cover it up. Kindle came out in black, Kobo came out in black; so Nook can come out in black.

Otherwise, the Nook's hardware is fine.

both 10 days and 4 weeks are stand by time. meaning nook will last that long if you don't use it at all, but is powered on (I actually unintentionally tested that once and it was 10 or 14 days). not sure how it looks with kindle. if you have wifi on and no touchscreen screen saver than you can probably drain nook within couple of hours. I'm just stating that because your requirement is uncommon and it will be hard to meet it if you are going to use the device. i would never assume a reader can last 4 weeks without charging even if you use it moderately. Perhaps you should look for a solar powered usb charger instead: http://www.meritline.com/newsearch.a...ar+usb+charger

I cant argue regarding the white bezel as it's obviously very personal preference/opinion, but i didn't see anyone ask for it in nook 2 before, so there's a good chance nook 2 wont have it. frankly i haven't seen any indication from b&n that they're even working on nook 2. i think they may have switched to embracing b&n software that runs on multitude of devices available on the market as opposed to building hardware.

[ProfCrash]

You are going to enjoy the organization feature. It is wonderful to be able to sort material in a way that makes sense for you. Hopefully it allows you to sort all of your material and not just B&N material. It is nice to be able to put all of your reading material into folders no matter who you get it from.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

What type of organization are you looking for? Why isn't title and author search sufficient?

Because the screen displays twelve document titles per page. no more, no less. No tagging, no ability to collapse down under author. I have hundreds of ebooks from Gutenberg.org and this fine site. But if i have to page through 20-30 pages of list to get to them, it takes alot of the pleasure out of the experience. I read multiple books at one time, so its not like I can just spend 10 minutes getting to a title and not have to worry with it again until i am done with that book. If i start with As You Like it on the first page, it takes me thumbing through literally 40 or so pages to get to War of the Worlds, therefore defeating the ability to hold a 16gb memory card. I just want to be able to folder, thats all. The Nook can recognize folders for my screen savers and wallpaper, so there is no reason in the world it can't for My Documents.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Because the screen displays twelve document titles per page. no more, no less. No tagging, no ability to collapse down under author. I have hundreds of ebooks from Gutenberg.org and this fine site. But if i have to page through 20-30 pages of list to get to them, it takes alot of the pleasure out of the experience. I read multiple books at one time, so its not like I can just spend 10 minutes getting to a title and not have to worry with it again until i am done with that book. If i start with As You Like it on the first page, it takes me thumbing through literally 40 or so pages to get to War of the Worlds, therefore defeating the ability to hold a 16gb memory card. I just want to be able to folder, thats all. The Nook can recognize folders for my screen savers and wallpaper, so there is no reason in the world it can't for My Documents.

Well, that's definitely not good. I haven't really fooled with a Nook all that much. I have read a little from a Kindle 2 and several books from a Sony Pocket 300. The Sony was easy to navigate.

[chas0039]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

What type of organization are you looking for? Why isn't title and author search sufficient?

To jump in, the library from nookdev has the ability to search for titles, sort by subject, sort within folders, and it handles large numbers of titles. Think how much you would like looking through 140 pages for a book. Think how you would like to be reading ten different books and then find B&N has rearranged your "most recent" order and that these books are now scattered randomly between 140 different pages. Think how you might like to see all the books by a certain author with a name starting with "W" and think how you would feel hitting the page turn button 130 times every time you wanted to look at their next book. Oh, and when you have it, they rearrange your order again. Then think how you might feel with a 16Gb SD card where you can only use 5-8% of the storage space before the file system falls apart. They never told you that when they listed capacity.

I will NEVER buy another nook unless they fix their problems. Given their current update, which is a slap in the face considering everyone else has at least folder management, I am getting message loud and clear from B&N and I will go elsewhere for my hardware. Come to think of it, I will go elsewhere for my books as well. "Unregistered nook" as of today.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by geertm

I like the fact that unlike Amazon B&N has chosen to support books from other bookstores, and I cannot fault them for trying to promote their own bookstore.

I like it also, but I'll be pretty annoyed if they greatly improve the cataloging and accessibility of books bought at their bookstore, but continue to require that I find the book I want to read out of the 1600 I bought at their subsidiary Fictionwise by looking through 200 or more pages (10 books per page). If they don't want to do it themselves, set up a Nook marketplace, and get a cut of every app that's sold through it.

BTW, I've rooted my nook, and the nookdevs nook library app is very nice, but it runs out of memory at about 3000 books, and I have more than that on my nook these days.

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by spec

What if B&N library organization sucks to the point people will be saying "I'm glad they didn't do that to My Documents"?

Ha! Good point.
Of course, I can't think of anything you could do to My Docs to make it suck more . At the point, it can only get better.

If the "improved search" can be taken at face value as applying to the entire system (and not just the B&N library), that's probably good enough considering how much angst they've made users go through (seen the B&N forum lately? ) to get these dribbles of mercy.

Annotations/highlights are still broken, the PDF reader remains without a zoom function. I'm not gonna go into any networking stuff because I don't personally think that's a necessary part of an ereader. Being generous, an ereader should be able to find a book easily, display it as it was meant to be seen and allow you to annotate it in a meaningful way. It was 1/3 to this point - perhaps 1.5 will move it up to 2/3. I guess doing serious reading (with exportable annots) on the nook remains a dream for another update

Originally Posted by geertm

I like the fact that unlike Amazon B&N has chosen to support books from other bookstores, and I cannot fault them for trying to promote their own bookstore.

You're far more generous than I am . I fault them for it constantly, primarily because I purchased a nook at full price - a price that was on par with other general purpose ereaders on the market not tied to any bookstore. They sold me an ereader, not a B&N subsidized reader for B&N ebooks (like a freaking Apple product). They would be justified in this ham-handed approach to lock-in if they had heavily subsidized their ereader (sorta like cell phone companies subsidize their phones heavily and lock you into 2 year contracts).

If the My docs remain unsearchable after 1.5, I'll officially have lost my patience and it's softroot time (luckily my nook is pre-1003).

[aagstn]

Not getting better sorting for the my documents feature is a letdown. They say they are adding most requested features and leave out the one most requested. However, I'm glad they are still updating it considering how well it already works. If the new search feature really lets me search in the my documents section I will probably be fine and any speed increases will be nice. Thumbs up overall, but really wish we could sort sideloaded content better. However, at least they give some support for other DRM unlike Amazon.