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pbennett · 12-13-2009, 02:34 AM

Sounds like you need to use it some more. I spent about thirty minutes with one in a B&N store and came away *very* unimpressed. It has some *serious* speed issues and some *serious* usability issues. Searching is completely broken - you can't search anything globally unless you purchased it from B&N. When searching, you're forced to step through each match one at a time [with a large delay between each match]. The Kindle shows all matches up front [almost instantly] with context and lets you quickly jump to the appropriate match.

Looking up words in the dictionary is pretty much completely unusable. You first have to activate the touchscreen (which presumably would be off after reading for a little bit). Even doing this never seemed to work consistently on the store unit. Then you have to scroll the menu up to expose the Look Up option (which also was flaky as the scrolling gesture wouldn't always stick). You pick look up, then you get a four-way control so that you can *slooowwwllyyy* move a highlight on screen to the word you want to look up in the dictionary. Once you eventually get there (and I mean eventually) you then click look up, wait a second while it tells you its looking it up, and.... most of the time, the word wouldn't be found. So... all that time and it wasn't even in the dictionary. With the Kindle2, a bunch of rapid clicks on the 5-way navigation nub and the cursor is on the word very quickly - if it's in the dictionary the abbreviated definition (usually more than enough) appears at the bottom of the screen within a half second. If I want the full definition I just hit enter.

I never would've thought the Kindle 2 was an example of great design, but after using the Nook, it really makes me think Amazon got way more right than I ever would've thought.

It crashed on me once [I had to pick force quit at one time]. I downloaded a sample of a book that never appeared (after about 15 minutes). I searched for a word [from a B&N downloaded book!] from the main screen that wasn't found that was found when in the book itself. I could go on. As open as I tried to be about the Nook I came away thinking, wow, that thing is a real mess. The 3 B&N employees I talked to about it didn't seem real thrilled with it either.

Maybe after it's had some updates it might not be the total disaster that IMO it is now, but I think having to use the touchscreen for everything but prev/next page is actually a pretty serious hindrance. The additional hard 5-way navigation and back buttons [ignoring the keyboard - which I think is probably fine as virtual only] make a huge difference in usability.

12-13-2009, 02:34 AM	#6
pbennett Enthusiast Posts: 41 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Sony 500, Amazon Kindle	Sounds like you need to use it some more. I spent about thirty minutes with one in a B&N store and came away very unimpressed. It has some serious speed issues and some serious usability issues. Searching is completely broken - you can't search anything globally unless you purchased it from B&N. When searching, you're forced to step through each match one at a time [with a large delay between each match]. The Kindle shows all matches up front [almost instantly] with context and lets you quickly jump to the appropriate match. Looking up words in the dictionary is pretty much completely unusable. You first have to activate the touchscreen (which presumably would be off after reading for a little bit). Even doing this never seemed to work consistently on the store unit. Then you have to scroll the menu up to expose the Look Up option (which also was flaky as the scrolling gesture wouldn't always stick). You pick look up, then you get a four-way control so that you can slooowwwllyyy move a highlight on screen to the word you want to look up in the dictionary. Once you eventually get there (and I mean eventually) you then click look up, wait a second while it tells you its looking it up, and.... most of the time, the word wouldn't be found. So... all that time and it wasn't even in the dictionary. With the Kindle2, a bunch of rapid clicks on the 5-way navigation nub and the cursor is on the word very quickly - if it's in the dictionary the abbreviated definition (usually more than enough) appears at the bottom of the screen within a half second. If I want the full definition I just hit enter. I never would've thought the Kindle 2 was an example of great design, but after using the Nook, it really makes me think Amazon got way more right than I ever would've thought. It crashed on me once [I had to pick force quit at one time]. I downloaded a sample of a book that never appeared (after about 15 minutes). I searched for a word [from a B&N downloaded book!] from the main screen that wasn't found that was found when in the book itself. I could go on. As open as I tried to be about the Nook I came away thinking, wow, that thing is a real mess. The 3 B&N employees I talked to about it didn't seem real thrilled with it either. Maybe after it's had some updates it might not be the total disaster that IMO it is now, but I think having to use the touchscreen for everything but prev/next page is actually a pretty serious hindrance. The additional hard 5-way navigation and back buttons [ignoring the keyboard - which I think is probably fine as virtual only] make a huge difference in usability.