I just got back from the Barnes & Noble in Seal Beach, CA (hello to the nice ladies there who now have MobileRead's address and may check us out).
Quick impressions:
- Though the measurements make it close to the Kindle 2 in size, it really looks and feels smaller to me. Slimmer widthwise and shorter. The thickness had a good hand feel to me (I still like the thickness of K1). I also really liked the look of it.
- It felt a bit heavier (because it is) and a little top heavy but I attribute that to the tether attached near the top of the back to keep it from being stolen.
- I didn't know how to turn it on, I kept pressing the little "n" and when it didn't work I had to ask for help (should have read the manual).
- They have the goofy screensaver authors as well.
- The biggest thing that surprised me was that I caught on to navigating with the LCD faster than I thought. Maybe it's because I've seen enough video and read about it but I did better than expected. However, it did take a few pokes for me to realize that I had press the little circle on the far right of the LCD screen to actually open the book. I kept pressing the forward arrow button because there is a little forward arrow next to the title of the book when you select it. After I figured that out, it was pretty smooth sailing.
- Page turns are indeed slower than my K2.
- Smaller margins on the book I opened. BTW, it seems not all stores have the same sample books. Mine had 2 copies of "Pride and Prejudice", the nook User Guide and a Nook Tour booklet of about 10 pages.
- Changing fonts and font sizes was easy. The font size change was slower than on K2 (which is almost instant).
- You can contacts to your nook. I assume this is for the lending feature.
- Cover flow did not work. It didn't work when browsing the store and it didn't work when browsing the titles already on the nook. I was told that the issue had to do with the AT&T Wi-Fi. Since I've read this before, it would seem that there really is an issue with AT&T.
- I did not find browsing the nook store to be a better experience. I love that the nook had pricing right there but the Kindle store (via the Kindle) gives me a gray-scale thumbnail of the books right next to the title. I do the majority of my ebook shopping on computer anyway and am not as nostalgic about browsing experience.
- I found the search function to be weird (maybe it's just me). While browsing the store I searched for the word "day" and was presented with a list of books with "day in the title" That's good. When I search for the works "day" while in the library of the books on the nook, I got one hit but it was just the title of the book (which did not have day in it), not the location. I didn't even get a hit off the dictionary. I'm not sure how you get to the word or phrase you searched for.
- The didn't have any periodicals loaded so I could see how they looked, especially image wise.
On the whole I liked it. After I read more reviews, I may go back and play with it more.
I was upfront with the ladies that I was Kindle user who just wanted to do a comparison. I told them about the eBay sales, which they thought was hilarious. I also told them that the nook was not different enough from my Kindle to make me want to but it but that I'd be back for the Plastic Logic Que.