Kindle vs Nook and notetaking

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We may be talking slightly at cross-purposes.

When you "sync" your annotation with the PC, everything gets transferred, and you can read the book on the PC (in the Sony eBook Library software) and see everything as it is on the Reader itself - handwritten notes, highlights, bookmarks, typed notes, etc etc.

If you want to use your typed notes in a separate application, however, you also have the option of saving them as an RTF file. If you do then, then ONLY the text you've typed gets exported, not the text of the book itself.

No, this is what I wanted to understand. To my mind the 600 is great for hand written quick notes but with the K2 you can highlight the text and it will be saved with the note in the "My Clippings.txt" file so that it can be used anyway you like/need.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

No, this is what I wanted to understand. To my mind the 600 is great for hand written quick notes but with the K2 you can highlight the text and it will be saved with the note in the "My Clippings.txt" file so that it can be used anyway you like/need.

The Reader supports "highlighting" text, but I honestly don't know if it gets exported or not. I'll try it and let you know!

[omk3]

You can export the highlighted text along with your notes to rtf, using the sony software.
(sorry, I see it was already mentioned)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by omk3

You can export the highlighted text along with your notes to rtf, using the sony software.
(sorry, I see it was already mentioned)

Thanks for clarifying that - I've never used highlighting, so I didn't know if it got exported or not.

[ppatt]

I concur and this is the reason why I am interested in this post and am about to bail on B&N anbd their Nooks. It is not for having tried to appeal to their enlightened self-interest in this matter. They apparently don't feel it important enough to cost them a significant part of their customer base.

Once you take a note or highlight you have to first go through the book to find the note. That is effectively useless to someone who is trying to enhance their memory and reach abck into books they read...possibly a long time ago.

How many times have I thought of something meaningful from a book I read years ago and just can't remember what it was or find it by thumbing through the old books dog-eared pages? I need to do this all the time.

This is slightly improved upon in the color Nook but it's very clunky.

For me, the best of all worlds would be:

1. note taking and highlighting
2. note typing to be associated with either page or highlighted passage
3. ability to share notes and highlighting between device and PC based reader
4. easily accessible note summary that supports directly linking to the noted or highlighted passage or page
5. for notes on highlighted passages the ability to print passages with their notes.

Hopefully someone will supply details about Kindle note taking. The manufacturers hardly provide enough details to make an effective decision.

[ppatt]

Thanks for the Kindle note-taking description. It was very useful. It doesn't indicate how you might print "My Notes & Marks" for a book. Does Amazon provide a PC based reader? Are "My Notes & Marks" shareable between Kindle and PC-based reader (if one exists)

[Ron.]

Originally Posted by ppatt

Thanks for the Kindle note-taking description. It was very useful. It doesn't indicate how you might print "My Notes & Marks" for a book. Does Amazon provide a PC based reader? Are "My Notes & Marks" shareable between Kindle and PC-based reader (if one exists)

you can not print them, they are sharable between device and reader so long as it is a amazon purchased book.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by ppatt

...For me, the best of all worlds would be:

1. note taking and highlighting
2. note typing to be associated with either page or highlighted passage
3. ability to share notes and highlighting between device and PC based reader
4. easily accessible note summary that supports directly linking to the noted or highlighted passage or page
5. for notes on highlighted passages the ability to print passages with their notes.

Hopefully someone will supply details about Kindle note taking. The manufacturers hardly provide enough details to make an effective decision.

Everything Daffy4U said in post #2 still applies.

You can take notes and highlight. The notes as well as the highlights are associated with locations or page numbers. You can share notes and highlighting between PC, Macs, and Kindles, and print or save the highlights and notes from your PC.

Originally Posted by Ron.

you can not print them, they are sharable between device and reader so long as it is a amazon purchased book.

As far as the "My Clippings" text file goes, it doesn't matter whether your book was purchased at Amazon or not; you can still transfer notes and highlights from non-Amazon sources to your computer via USB. It is true, however, that only notes and highlights from Amazon purchased books are saved online at the Amazon site.

[Ron.]

copying the text file is not the same thing as sharing between device and kindle for pc, though i guess you could copy the text file into kindle for pc. I'm not sure if that's much use that way though, it wouldn't link to the book.

[ppatt]

Thanks to you and Ron...one more point...maybe you or others with first-hand device experience can comment. BTW, I own Nook Classic and my need for better note-taking drives my search for a new device.

My experience with Nook Classic's incredibly slow and tedious cursor movement makes me wary of the 5-way controller that comes with Kindle. It seems to be much easier to swipe the finger to highlight on a fully touch sensitive screen.

The complaint I hear about Nook Color note taking is that it treats notes and highlights the same and the summary shows only the passage that was highlighted or to which the note refers (i.e. not the notes themselves). From the post I read I could not tell how one would access the note from the summary or navigate to the actual passage though it seems reasonable that this would be supported. On the other hand I've assumed that designs were reasonable in the past when they turned out not to be so.

I hope I got all this right. If so, then I'll opt for Nook Color. It does not bother me that summary shows passages and not notes as long as I can navigate to the note and the passage directly from the summary.

I have never been big on the physical keys on the Kindle. The soft keyboard works just fine by me. I'd rather have the same footprint with all real estate being devoted to the screen.

I can try the Nook color and will but getting the nitty-gritty details on the Kindle are more difficult unless one is asking someone who actually owns one...preferably a power user.

[Ron.]

I think your best bet is to go to a walmart or target etc... and give it a try on the devices themselves. With that said I do not find highlighting any more difficult on the kindle compared to the nook, of course it takes a bit of getting used to the 5 way controller.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by ppatt

...My experience with Nook Classic's incredibly slow and tedious cursor movement makes me wary of the 5-way controller that comes with Kindle. It seems to be much easier to swipe the finger to highlight on a fully touch sensitive screen....

Touch screens may be faster, but the five-way scroller is more precise. There's less room for error.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by ppatt

Thanks for the Kindle note-taking description. It was very useful. It doesn't indicate how you might print "My Notes & Marks" for a book. Does Amazon provide a PC based reader? Are "My Notes & Marks" shareable between Kindle and PC-based reader (if one exists)

You can print highlights/notes either by using the extractable "My Clippings" text document or using the kindle.amazon.com page. (The highlights page only saves highlights/notes from Amazon books.) An example is shown below:

Kindle User's Guide, 4th Ed. by Amazon.com
You have 1 highlighted passage
You have 1 note
Last annotated on June 19, 2010
As an example, this sentence is highlighted and has a note attached as indicated by the superscripted number one to the right of this text.Read more at location 162 • Delete this highlight
Note: This is where you would type your note. All of your notes are also saved to your "My Clippings" file, so you can read them later or copy to your computer to edit or share with your friends. Edit

The first underlined section is the highlighted portion, the bold "Read More" is a hyperlink which opens Kindle for PC, taking you to that spot in the book. The second underlined section is your note which may also be edited using the "edit" button.

If you lose or destroy your Kindle, this information is not lost. If your Kindle copy of your book must be restored from the archives, highlights and notes are also restored. Unless something has changed recently with any of the Nooks, your highlights/notes are inextricably linked with the Nook book and are lost if you have to factory restore the Nook or the book becomes corrupted.

[EbokJunkie]

Guys, Kindle 3 note making is very comfortable (not familiar with Nook Touch, so cannot comment), 5-way joystick moves cursor steadily and fast.
One problem still persists: Notes in My Clippings.txt are placed by date, so if you read two or three different books, jump between books and make notes/highlights - it will be PITA to get notes from one book only. Small tool developed by user of the-ebook.org will help you to extract any selection from My Clippings.txt.

[WT Sharpe]

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Originally Posted by EbokJunkie

Guys, Kindle 3 note making is very comfortable (not familiar with Nook Touch, so cannot comment), 5-way joystick moves cursor steadily and fast.
One problem still persists: Notes in My Clippings.txt are placed by date, so if you read two or three different books, jump between books and make notes/highlights - it will be PITA to get notes from one book only. Small tool developed by user of the-ebook.org will help you to extract any selection from My Clippings.txt.

If the book was bought from Amazon, you can also see your highlighting and notes on each book individually by signing into your Kindle account at http://kindle.amazon.com/kindle. I generally read more than one book at a time and jump around, so I appreciate that site.