Technologizer posts his Nook review

[Ocean]

Highlights:

* it feels like a less-than-perfectly-polished 1.0 product

* The user interface is surprisingly sluggish

* these issues all relate to software, not the physical design.

* It’s also the least posh-feeling e-reader, being unapologetically made of plastic while both the Kindle and the Sony are partially clad in metal.

* Barnes & Noble’s e-reader is the only one of the three to have nailed the most basic input action of all: turning pages.

* If you’re expecting the touchscreen to boast all the transcendent, fluid slickness of an iPhone, you’ll be disappointed. It’s not that gorgeous, and the Nook would have been nearly as pleasing if the screen was monochrome.

* Mostly, I stuck with the less flashy plain-text list of books. It works fine, although I found it odd that selecting a book doesn’t immediately plunk you into its text. Instead, you get an intermediary screen, and must then choose the Read option.

* the Nook’s most serious drawback is that it’s slow even for an E-Ink reader. It flips its virtual pages noticeably more sluggishly than the Kindle or the Sony

* Barnes & Noble representatives told me that the speed of the device is limited by its use of Google’s Android 1.5 operating system, but the company is working to optimize the experience in a software update which it plans to push out to Nooks in January.

* Even if none of your friends spring for a Nook, LendMe may come in handy: Barnes & Noble says you can lend books to users of its reader apps for Windows, Mac, and iPhone/iPod Touch, and that it’s extending lending to readers for BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile.

* At the moment, much of the Barnes & Noble e-book stores’ offerings are still in the proprietary PDB format.

http://technologizer.com/2009/12/06/nook-review/