B&N to release NOOK GlowLight 3

[downeaster59]

I've been pondering all this. The more I think about it, the more my opinion about this device - and B&N - improves. Let me explain.

The average person who is looking at the Glowlight 3 is someone who is already into the B&N ecosystem, or is about to enter an eBook ecosystem for the first time. That person would never notice issues like partitioning, or care. That person also might know little about the underlying Android OS. By being kept from that, so to speak, they won't inadvertently mess anything up. They will buy B&N content, and eventually learn about sideloading. For such a person, the Glowlight 3 is a fine e-reader. And such people are most e-reader buyers.

For people like us, B&N left a bonus that is hidden, but not too hidden. They could have made it a lot harder to access ADB, install apps, or root this device. They could have chosen a different OS. But they didn't. They might (quietly) assume (if they thought about it at all) that anyone who could figure out how to do such things will also know how to use that knowledge responsibly, and not totally screw up their device! (That's a big assumption, I know, but I'm staying positive!) But, as it is, if you know about ADB, you can install apps without rooting. You can install Calibre Companion and fill the B&N content partition to your heart's content. You can install your favorite reading app(s) to read those books. You can use Calibre and a USB connection to access the sideloading partition, if you wish. With rooting, you can remap the page turn buttons to work with your preferred reading app - and do other tweaks.

The biggest issues with this device may come from people who fall in between these two categories. Those who know more than people in the first category, but who don't know quite enough (yet) to feel comfortable doing most second category stuff. But, if you figure out what you do want from this device - within reason, given the hardware we have - it's not too hard to learn the skills to make that happen. I did. Some of you have, as well.

So, yes, we can all imagine ways that this device could have been improved to meet any of our tastes or standards. But, overall, this is a pretty good device - and it could easily have been a lot worse. It's easier to customize than a Kindle, and offers potentially more customization options than a Kobo, given the Android OS and rooting. Yeah, it could have been better - but it could have been a lot more restricted.

So, I'm going to actually (gasp!) praise B&N for this e-reader! It may not be the 100% ideal device I might imagine, but it comes reasonably close, given that we're a niche group to begin with!

Such is my (somewhat) humble opinion.... YMMV!

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

The biggest issues with this device may come from people who fall in between these two categories. Those who know more than people in the first category, but who don't know quite enough (yet) to feel comfortable doing most second category stuff. But, if you figure out what you do want from this device - within reason, given the hardware we have - it's not too hard to learn the skills to make that happen.

I think you've given me a good reason to buy this. I'd been thinking about getting one, if only for the comfort factor. I returned my new Oasis because I found it painful to hold.

The Nook is at least inexpensive enough that I won't be too terrified to play around with it. There's a Barnes & Noble about a mile from my house....

[Tony1988]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

I've been pondering all this. The more I think about it, the more my opinion about this device - and B&N - improves. Let me explain.

The average person who is looking at the Glowlight 3 is someone who is already into the B&N ecosystem, or is about to enter an eBook ecosystem for the first time. That person would never notice issues like partitioning, or care. That person also might know little about the underlying Android OS. By being kept from that, so to speak, they won't inadvertently mess anything up. They will buy B&N content, and eventually learn about sideloading. For such a person, the Glowlight 3 is a fine e-reader. And such people are most e-reader buyers.

For people like us, B&N left a bonus that is hidden, but not too hidden. They could have made it a lot harder to access ADB, install apps, or root this device. They could have chosen a different OS. But they didn't. They might (quietly) assume (if they thought about it at all) that anyone who could figure out how to do such things will also know how to use that knowledge responsibly, and not totally screw up their device! (That's a big assumption, I know, but I'm staying positive!) But, as it is, if you know about ADB, you can install apps without rooting. You can install Calibre Companion and fill the B&N content partition to your heart's content. You can install your favorite reading app(s) to read those books. You can use Calibre and a USB connection to access the sideloading partition, if you wish. With rooting, you can remap the page turn buttons to work with your preferred reading app - and do other tweaks.

The biggest issues with this device may come from people who fall in between these two categories. Those who know more than people in the first category, but who don't know quite enough (yet) to feel comfortable doing most second category stuff. But, if you figure out what you do want from this device - within reason, given the hardware we have - it's not too hard to learn the skills to make that happen. I did. Some of you have, as well.

So, yes, we can all imagine ways that this device could have been improved to meet any of our tastes or standards. But, overall, this is a pretty good device - and it could easily have been a lot worse. It's easier to customize than a Kindle, and offers potentially more customization options than a Kobo, given the Android OS and rooting. Yeah, it could have been better - but it could have been a lot more restricted.

So, I'm going to actually (gasp!) praise B&N for this e-reader! It may not be the 100% ideal device I might imagine, but it comes reasonably close, given that we're a niche group to begin with!

Such is my (somewhat) humble opinion.... YMMV!

Yeah I agree. I'm not really getting all this disappointment with the partition thing. Aren't people pretty much locked in Amazon's ecosystem as well without doing anything with the unit besides buying books????? So I dont see the problem. I could me missing something though ...

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Tony1988

Yeah I agree. I'm not really getting all this disappointment with the partition thing. Aren't people pretty much locked in Amazon's ecosystem as well without doing anything with the unit besides buying books????? So I dont see the problem. I could me missing something though ...

There are lots of places to buy books to read on a Kindle without being locked into Amazon's ecosystem and the devices storage is all available for either type of book (Amazon purchase or sideload from another seller).


I'm sure the partition thing makes no difference, or means little, to most of B&N's potential Nook buyers, but a lot of what you might see expressed on MR isn't going to be indicative of the general market and even on a forum like MR you'll likely see opinions split.

For myself, if I was in the market for a device I'd probably give the Nook a pass due to the partition as I like to have all of my books on my device and I couldn't do that with the new Nook (at least not out of the box). I still wouldn't hesitate to recommend a Nook to someone that asked and was looking at a new device depending on how they described their needs, but I know plenty of folks too who would simply consider the device "crap" and not recommend it because of the partitioned space. These are the kind of folks who are the family members that always get asked for what to buy advice so...

Hopefully B&N will leave the ADB access the way it is (IIRC it was the same/similar on the last device?), but probably won't ever fully trust that they will after they retroactively took away my ability to easily sideload apps on the HD+ with a firmware "upgrade" years ago.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Tony1988

Yeah I agree. I'm not really getting all this disappointment with the partition thing. Aren't people pretty much locked in Amazon's ecosystem as well without doing anything with the unit besides buying books????? So I dont see the problem. I could me missing something though ...

With either the Kobo or Amazon ecosystem, I am free to use the entire available storage for books purchased elsewhere and sideloaded. A choice the B&N with their partitioned file system do not allow. It seems rather odd to say Amazon and freedom of choice in the same sentence but hard to argue with the facts.

You might want to consider that the world does not stop at the borders of the USA. B&N dropped their partnership with Microsoft in mid-2015 dumping ebook support outside the USA and UK. Less than a year later, their Nook store in the UK closed it's virtual doors transferring support to Sainsbury. I'm not going to bother checking but I seem to recall that Sainbury moved to their ebook customers to Kobo about 6 months later.

At this point, if I wanted an Android based ereader, I suspect a Tolino or Icarus device would be higher on my list of possible purchases.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

With either the Kobo or Amazon ecosystem, I am free to use the entire available storage for books purchased elsewhere and sideloaded. A choice the B&N with their partitioned file system do not allow.

Well, true – but 1GB can hold (according to some estimates) about 3,000 eBooks. So I (personally) think I can "limp along" with the limitation. I'm guessing I'll never own 3,000 eBooks (side-loaded or otherwise, especially since most of my eBooks are coming from the library these days).

[Calenorn]

I just picked up a NOOK Glowlight 3 from my local Barnes & Noble. Front light color shifting is as good as advertised!

Did the usual registration procedure. Plugged that puppy into the PC to side load some books. Here's what I see in the NOOK drive, four folders:

* adobe-digital-editions
* Android
* LOST.DIR
* NOOK

After the device updated itself to 47.2.103_user, it displays a total of 0.95GB external storage available. The PC file explorer shows the NOOK as a drive with 974MB total capacity.

Does anyone know if a file of images can be loaded on this device to be used as screensavers? If so, where should that folder be saved?

[disconnected]

Well, I’ve bought one.

I am apparently not ready for the fun stuff like installing apps because I haven't yet mastered the basics.

Before trying BN customer service I thought I’d see if anyone here has found something I’ve missed.

On the Library pages for All Items or Books you can sort by Recent or Author or Title. What I can’t find is a way to is limit the items displayed to just the ones actually on the device.

You can create shelves so, worst case, I thought I could at least work around this limitation by creating a shelf for just the books actually on the device. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to sort the contents of the shelves. They don’t default to the order selected on the All Items or Books pages, it’s random – and some of the items on the shelf are listed twice (not together, just in two random places), although the count given for the books on the shelf is correct.

According to the user guide, you can copy files (“including EPUB files, PDFs, and photos”) from your PC to the Nook . It tells me to put the files onto the NOOK drive and then “organize” the files by opening the NOOK drive, and moving the files into the My Files folder.

This made no sense to me (if they want the damn files in the My Files folder, why can’t I just copy them directly there from my PC) but I tried to follow instructions. I copied a PDF file from the PC to the Nook drive and looked for a folder called My Files somewhere on the drive. There is no such folder. I ejected the Nook and looked on the library page for My Files, where it tells me, unsurprisingly, that I have not yet copied any files to the Nook.

I sideloaded some books from Calibre and that at least worked well. They show up along with all the other books in the All Items and Books pages. File explorer finds the books I’ve sideloaded, in author folders inside the Books folder, and tells me I’ve used 10.2 MB of the total 974 MB (no mention of the hidden partition).

[Calenorn]

@ disconnected:

If I remember correctly, older NOOK versions had a "My Files" folder. But, as you saw, just dumping your book folders into the NOOK folder should work.

I haven't read the user guide yet. I DO hope they got that right!

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

@ disconnected:

If I remember correctly, older NOOK versions had a "My Files" folder. But, as you saw, just dumping your book folders into the NOOK folder should work.

I haven't read the user guide yet. I DO hope they got that right!

You're right. It turns out that putting them in the Nook folder does work.

I've been reading the user guide again. It tells me if I archive a book it will only show up on the Archive shelf, not on the Books shelf. Which seems to work except that you can only archive one book at a time (whether you archive them from the BN site or from the device). I suppose I can do that, but good grief, my BN library has over 800 books (mostly carried over from my ereader and fictionwise accounts).

[Calenorn]

@ disconnected: Yes, shelving on the NOOK has always been a pain. At least you have plenty of memory for your B&N content!

(By the way, if the idea is to store your purchases in the cloud, why does the device have to have all that memory partitioned off? )

One extreme solution would be to delete the books you don't want to re-read from your B&N account. Cull the herd a bit.

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

@ disconnected: Yes, shelving on the NOOK has always been a pain. At least you have plenty of memory for your B&N content!

(By the way, if the idea is to store your purchases in the cloud, why does the device have to have all that memory partitioned off? )

One extreme solution would be to delete the books you don't want to re-read from your B&N account. Cull the herd a bit.

Some days I'm a dunce.

I just realized I could do a mass archive on the Nook. On the Books screen I can click on the three dots at the top and select Archive. It brings up all the books with boxes you can check off, with even an option for "all".

I feel much better now.

[Calenorn]

@disconnected: Just curious, how long did it take to download 800 books to your new NOOK?

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

@disconnected: Just curious, how long did it take to download 800 books to your new NOOK?

I never actually downloaded them. My problem was just that all the books in your BN library show up on the Nook library screen even if they're not on the device. The only way to get them off is to delete or archive them (which was easy enough to do once I realized I could do them all at once.

I sideload everything on all my ereaders from Calibre so once I have all the BN stuff archived I should never have to see it again.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

If I remember correctly, older NOOK versions had a "My Files" folder. But, as you saw, just dumping your book folders into the NOOK folder should work.

In my NST (and NST w/Glowlight) I made a "screensavers" folder, then another folder inside of that (in my case "Saints"). Not sure why I did that (it's been a while) but – somehow – it worked. Maybe Android just searches for images wherever they may be located?