[6charlong]

I’ve been using a Kindle for the past nine months and can’t help comparing the new nook with it. I have to say the touch interface on the nook is a big improvement. When I go back to my Kindle I keep wanting to touch my choices, especially when it comes to choosing a book to read or picking a word to look up in the dictionary. The nook’s touch interface does not support the stylus but I’ve had no trouble with “fat-fingering” it.

The touch interface is put to good use in selecting books from your library and in using the “settings” feature. It is especially nice when you shop in the B&N store. I should mention here that my nook has a superior antenna to my Kindle. It gets a stronger signal than my Kindle judged by the number of bars I see both in my home and at public “hot spots.” Of course, this is anecdotal so others may find more or less and of course, nook has a faster CPU than Kindle and it really shows. It’s not so noticeable when you’re just turning pages, but the nook is quite snappy online and the better connections could result from the fact that the new nook supports b/g/n routers.

There is little difference of clarity between the screens. As others have noticed, the nook’s touch screen technology does not diminish the brilliance of its Pearl Screen, and the touch works perfectly--more accurate, in my opinion--than even the touch interface on the iPad 1.

I was fascinated by the nook's sculptured back with its rubberized surface and the promise of a better grip on the lighter nook reader, however the system didn’t work for me. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble sells a series of tasteful covers for the nook and I was very pleased to have a brick and mortar store to shop at where I could compare real life models of the covers. With a cover attached I find the lighter weight, smaller form factor and better balance of the nook make reading for hours more pleasant.

The new nook is a step ahead in hardware, but content always has been the real issue with eBook readers. I found the contest between Amazon and Barnes and Noble a mixed bag to say the least. In the first place, the nook flawlessly handled my library of almost 200 secure ePub books, a collection I started when the first PRS500 came out while Amazon was still selling eBooks with the old Mobi DRM (I bought a few of those too but the Kindle can’t read them and I’ve deleted them years ago.) Adobe Digital Editions recognized the nook the moment the two met and ADE authorized it without a fuss. I copied my ePub library to the nook’s SD card and started setting them up in collections.

The book covers for generic ePub books don’t show up when I put them on the nook’s “bookshelves” (nook’s term for collections); it displays them as outlines with the book’s name inside the outline. Personal choice here but I’ve never liked frills like that anyway, so I display the bookshelves as a list of titles within my collections the way they’re displayed on the Kindle. I have more content available on the nook due to that big library of formerly purchased books and it pleases me no end knowing it’s all legal. But there’s another side to this issue of content and I suspect it’s the real issue between Barns and Noble and Amazon.

I’ve only found one eBook that B&N sold and Amazon didn’t. It was a relatively new eBook and it turned up on Amazon a week after B&N had it. I wondered if this was possibly as a result of Amazon’s “I want this book for Kindle” feature on the screens for paper books, a clever move that puts Amazon’s customers happily to work building the Amazon store. (Barnes and Noble used to have this feature but they seem to have dropped it.) In only a couple of weeks I found several other eBooks I wanted that only Amazon sells.

I tried looking at other ePub sources. Since I knew the books were digitized it seemed reasonable to expect someone to sell them but no, I went from the Sony Reader store to Books on Board and on and on. I had to conclude that some books, even some that are frankly important, are available for the Kindle alone. This surprised me so I looked again with some other books and sure enough, there are some eBooks that if you can’t buy them from Amazon you can’t read them.

Of course, Amazon famously went out of its way to become a sort of digital publishing house. They encourage writers to publish their work in Amazon’s Kindle store and they even print paper versions of the most popular eBook only titles. The store offers Amazon Shorts too, a brilliant idea and a way to sell inexpensive monographs, short essays, novellas and short stories. And Amazon’s library of magazines and newspapers includes many publications that are not available for the nook or any other reader.

Amazon has always been riding the tip of the technology wave. At the moment the nook strikes me as the best reader for reading fiction and nonfiction hampered only by having less content. Certainly there are many books in the backlists that are not available on any book reader. I don't want to overstate the case here: the Kindle isn’t far behind. Amazon is almost certain to take steps to catch up.

Perhaps Amazon’s plan to support ePub will make all the other content sources available to Amazon customers, and, of course make the Amazon eBookstore available to everyone who reads digital books, magazines and newspapers, putting Amazon in direct competition with every other online store. Now I’ve started speculating and I should stop. We’ll all know soon enough what they’re going to do. In the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying my Allnew nook.