[ColdSun]

I thought it would be nice to get my first impressions, much like Nate gave his in the other thread. I wanted to create my own thread because my experience seems to be completely different, which I can't explain. Keep in mind these notes are just my early thoughts dealing with the new Pandigital Novel and I reserve the right to change my mind after I have worked with it more. I plan on doing a review on the device by the end of the week. So here are my thoughts so far...

Unboxing
Going from having to depend on Chinese tablets for my LCD ebook reading needs has made me quite accepting of no packaging or cheap packaging. The Pandigital Novel came in a pretty color box with all the things you would expect to see on any product purchased from a larger company. The device was well packed and simple to extract. It was sealed in a bag in which I had to tear open that leads me to believe it has some quality control.

How It Holds/Feels
How can I state this? It feels real good. It is heavier than my Sony PRS-505 but lighter than my eBookwise-1150. I would have to disagree with statements about not being able to hold this in one hand for long periods of time. The device does not feel cheap and in fact feels very solid to me.

Wireless Hookup
The device scanned and found my wireless without any issues. I have not updated the firmware yet.

Performance
The initial bootup of the device took a minute or so as it displayed a nice Novel logo screen. Once it boot, I had no trouble navigating around the interface and changing settings, hooking up WIFI, surfing the net, and opening books.

Page turning seems decent, much faster than my JE-100 turns pages actually. To be honest, I'm not quite sure how mine and Nate's opinion on this is so different. I would have to compare the overall performance of the OS and ebook reading to my son's Archos 5 Internet Tablet (with Aldiko). I'm reading Bram Stoker's Dracula on it right now (it comes with some books pre-loaded). There is a slight delay in the animation when turning pages and a little hitching when the animation moves. Nothing at all to stop the enjoyment of reading on the device though.

The Screen
Well if you are used to capacitive screens like the iPad or iPod Touch, and can't live without that responsiveness, then I'm not sure this is for you. On the other hand, if you are like me and are used to the horrible responsiveness of the last generation of chinese tables (SmartQ, SmartV), you will be pleasantly suprised at how well this thing responds. I would say it responds like my A81 or JE-100 when clicking the screen - which is better than the others I mentioned. The page swipe to turn pages takes a little getting used to, and sometimes you miss and the page doesn't turn, but once I got used to the screen it was working I had it turning pages 9 out of 10 and even 10 out of 10 attempts. Thumb doesn't work as well as index finger FYI.

As for the rest, I'll comment and answer questions if anyone has them. I'm about to upgrade the firmware. I do not know what version of Android is on here, but according to someone else who has spoken with the company (the reviewer at Technilicious) it has Android 2.0 on it.

EDIT: IMPORANT - the stand that comes with the device is so cool. The power adapter reaches up through the bottom and can be left in the stand so when you charge the device you just put it in the stand like the good old PDA days and cradles.

THERE IS ONE THING I DON'T LIKE. This version (the white 1GB version) does not support changing from portrait to landscape. At least from what I've seen. Still, as an LCD ebook reader, this thing feels like exactly what I was looking for. Now if I can only hack it to put other Android apps on like a comic reader I'm all set!