[tomsem]

One reason my Nook Touch sits unused today is that it is now so much easier to get library ebooks on my Kindle. There are even a couple of workarounds that make it possible to browse and download from the library web site using the Kindle browser (a few rough edges to smooth out there), though using a computer browser is usually more efficient. And I like the full integration with the Kindle platform. When I can't finish a book and need to check it out again, it picks up with the reading position and any highlights I may have created previously. I can also download the books to my iPod or Xoom and view illustrations in color there (with zoom and pan). Library ebooks are a significant part of my 'diet' of late.

Amazon is rolling out some changes for handling of 'Personal Documents' that will extend Kindle platform services (cloud storage, sync, annotation backup) to content you convert or send via email to your Kindle. 5Gb of free storage for each account.

It's things like this that make me prefer Kindle to B&N platform. B&N seems too overwhelmed right now to even deliver a couple of simple updates for Nook Touch that would be very appreciated.

And yes, I'm looking forward to the $99 Touch 'SO' model. I think it will overwhelmingly outsell the non-SO, especially since it seems there will be an opt-out option (at least K4 has one). Sony Reader is much more feature rich and only $10 more as well. So yes, they need to reduce the Nook price.

In comparing Nook and Kindle platforms, a couple of other things bear consideration: 'lock-in', and format.

The former is clearly in B&N's favor: you can purchase content at B&N and you can read it on any compliant reading system, and there are many such systems (not including Sony that is). With Kindle, that reading system has to be one from Amazon. What if you don't like their software, or if they start churning out crap hardware? What if they go out of business, or you just don't want to do business with them any more for whatever reason? These are valid concerns.

In theory, "ePub is better than Kindle format," and that should weigh in B&N's favor as well. However, Nook STR may not be the best showcase for the format. Some books look better with Publisher Defaults, some decidedly not, the text options don't interact properly with each other, text size is not stable between books, etc., and so switching between books often means a trip to the text options panel to fix things (and some books can't be fixed). It's annoying, and goes beyond the usual typos and conversion artifacts common in ebooks everywhere. But Nook is by no means alone in having ineffectual yet necessary text layout options for ePub rendering. Publishers can hardly avoid creating ebooks that look bad on some ePub rendering systems (we've been through this with web browsers, and only recently have things smoothed out). The only real solution is to make the settings book-specific (and effective where possible), but hardly any ePub reading systems offer this. Say what you will about .mobi format not being expressive enough, but it's more predictable, and I almost never have to adjust text settings unless I just want a change of scenery.

So for me at least, there's no great advantage to ePub right now, and in some ways Kindle is better (while neither is totally great as things stand).

That said, my hope is that Amazon will adopt ePub3 in a year or two. it will take that long for any platform other than iBooks or the non-DRM Ibis Reader to support it meaningfully, so there's no rush. They also need to offer export-to-Adobe DRM files so you can use your choice of compliant reading systems (I assume that DRM is not going away any time soon, and that most people are not prepared to remove DRM). Maybe publishers will actually figure out how to format eBooks by then, too, so there aren't so many issues overall. mobi is old and crusty, and Amazon knows it, and knows publishers don't like dealing with it. They also know that there are many potential customers who will not enter their walled garden—however pleasant it may appear—without a key for the exit door.