[Abulia]

Went down to the B&N in Salt Lake City today and spent over 30 minutes with their nook. The only reason I've broken this out into its own thread is because I have never used an ebook reader in my life. Actually, prior to today, I've never even seen an e-ink display firsthand.

So my impressions aren't colored vis-a-vie this competing device or that. It's solely based on using a nook and nothing all.

First, the unit was smaller than I expected. Also it has a bit of heft to it. It certainly looks like it should be lighter. It has slim lines and curved edges; it was pleasant to hold while standing and reading.

At first I didn't think it was a working unit. There was an author picture screensaver on and the LCD/nook button didn't do anything. At the top it said "Press the power button to turn on your nook" and at the very top, hidden away and slightly behind the screen, was a 1" long thin power button. Sure enough the unit sprang to life!

I'm a tech geek (sans ebook readers) and felt right at home with the nook UI. It wasn't difficult or confusing at all to navigate. Very straightforward. I did have some issues getting the LCD touch screen to take my inputs. Used to my iPhone, it only took a few swipes for me to intuitively get the feel for how the nook wanted its input.

The cover flow UI did seem a little hesitant to respond. It wasn't slow per se, but not as snappy as I'm used with my iPhone 3GS, for example. Touching a book gets you to an overview page and pressing Read lets you read the book.

When loading a book the nook does make you wait to format the book. This took anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds on the books that were loaded on the nook. I did notice the length of formatting was directly proportional to the size of the book; small sample books formatted nearly instantly while the larger books, longer.

There were three different fonts available and five sizes, ranging from really tiny (!) to absurdly large. Plenty to find what you need to read comfortably. Navigation page buttons -- forward and backward -- are located on both sides of the nook. Presumably left-handed folks will appreciate this feature.

The display was impressive. Having not seen an e-ink display before I have to say that I was really impressed by the clarity. Turning the nook to a severe angle the text was still crisp and legible. I assume this is true for most ebook displays.

Yes, there were momentary page "flashes" between turns, but as I understand it that's normal as well. They were quick enough for my liking.

The LCD display auto-offs while you read, the interval can be as short as 10 seconds in the nook Settings. Touching the LCD brings the display back to life. Pressing the power button puts the nook to sleep and the screensaver comes back. Turning back on resumes where you were reading and takes, at most, 1 second to come back.

Pressing the nook home button takes you to the homepage and the LCD navigation. Since I was in the B&N store I went to browse a book through their library. It's pretty massive and uber-convenient to order a book. Samples were available and on a whim I downloaded a sample -- "Kushiel's Mercy" if you must know -- and within 20 seconds it was on the nook and ready to read. I'm not sure if the feature is turned on yet but I didn't see a way to read a book while in B&N without buying it. You can use the color cover flow to browse books and the covers came up plenty quick. Actually the entire nook experience seemed plenty quick to me.

Since the user manual is online for anyone to read I don't think I need to spend much time discussing the interface beyond I found it plenty responsive and easy to use. It worked and worked well.

The unit had WiFi on and brightness at 100% and I started -- and ended -- my session with the battery meter not moving off of 67%. So with pretty heavy LCD usage and downloading, the nook battery didn't budge.

So there you go. Having not used any other reader before I have to say that I was impressed by the nook. Based on the reviews -- and the horde of negative Nancy's on this forum -- I was really expecting a sub-par experience that didn't show its head. The unit was plenty fast and to be up and reading within 1 second entirely reasonable. Having to "format" a book the first time you open it is a little annoying but not a deal-breaker to me. The store was plenty easy to navigate and search was darn quick!

My only real complaint is that the LCD UI -- when using cover flow for the first time -- showed a moment of sluggishness. But you have to be looking for it to have noticed it.

Note that I did not get to try to read a PDF on the nook. So I can't comment on that at all. Which is really a shame as PDF reading is something that I would likely do with my nook.

I have a nook on pre-order for no other reason than I didn't want a keyboard on my ebook reader and I like the options on the nook (lending, removable keyboard, etc). The only thing tempting me to not keep my nook are the crazy eBay prices; sell and get one for free or upgrade to an 8" reader or something?

Questions if you have any.

[Edit] Did some research and the "read a book while in B&N for an hour" functionality is not live yet. That was a mistake on my part.