Classic Anyone get to try the Nook?

[Propheous]

Well I was in the store the other day and saw the display. You can pre-order the nook and they won't charge your card (if you use a credit card) till it ships. Mine is slated for Jan 4th as they are short on stock.

So as for it being vaporware, I would have to say that given the prominence of the display and the staff I talked to I would say it is real.

[WookieReader]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

I really **REALLY** want to like the Nook. I think it'd be a good toy to add to my collection of Readers

But until I get to play with it...mostly I'm concerned with the pretty pictures on the bottom distracting me from the top screen.

I also need to do more research into my Amazon price points compared with B/N...I've already given up on Sony and most of the other e-retailers compared to Amazon.

Ditto. I got on the Sony site and was thinking about the new 900 coming, and even went today and looked at the PRS-300 and 600. Comparing the books I have on the Amazon Kindle-DX to the same books from Sony's site, the Sony site was 20-25% more expensive. I would agree that my pick of books may just be anecdotal coincidence, but Amazon appeared cheaper.

[Propheous]

Originally Posted by WookieReader

Ditto. I got on the Sony site and was thinking about the new 900 coming, and even went today and looked at the PRS-300 and 600. Comparing the books I have on the Amazon Kindle-DX to the same books from Sony's site, the Sony site was 20-25% more expensive. I would agree that my pick of books may just be anecdotal coincidence, but Amazon appeared cheaper.

I think amazon will have a cheaper price point for a while. It helps to have a captive audience to appease the retailers. If you think about it right now, amazon is one of the most appealing sites to sell your e-book with from a business perspective because of its DRM, and customer base. B&N has DRM as well, but being a brick and motor company they have a disadvantage of increase overhead. In the end I think the prices will start to come with in a close call, but that end is still a ways off. If the nook steals a solid market share I think it may find its in B&N's best interest to start price matching as a way to steal greater market share. B&N is not at that point yet and we will have to wait for the dust to settle on the nook before we see any concrete moves.

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by Propheous

I think amazon will have a cheaper price point for a while. It helps to have a captive audience to appease the retailers. If you think about it right now, amazon is one of the most appealing sites to sell your e-book with from a business perspective because of its DRM, and customer base. B&N has DRM as well, but being a brick and motor company they have a disadvantage of increase overhead. In the end I think the prices will start to come with in a close call, but that end is still a ways off. If the nook steals a solid market share I think it may find its in B&N's best interest to start price matching as a way to steal greater market share. B&N is not at that point yet and we will have to wait for the dust to settle on the nook before we see any concrete moves.

The question of price can already be answered, since B&N has been selling ebooks for a while now. It would just take a 3-way comparison between Amazon, B&N and Sony to see who fares best.

I remember the latest Dan Brown POS... er Tome... costing the least at B&N ebooks when it hit the format.

The good news is this opens up greater competition. Sony wasn't really a serious threat to Amazon, and all the other small shops even less so. B&N is already perceived as a book store, so that legitimizes the connection between the Nook and the Store... just as Amazon was immediately legit with the Kindle. So they are going to really be head-to-head.

Hopefully, this will lead to the bigger development: an single format that all readers can access. We're heading toward ePUB at this point. And all three are using DRM at this point, so if any of these retailers croak, so do your books.

-Pie

[Nitrousoxide]

So I went out to my local store and they had one on display. I checked it out for a few minutes and was impressed. The eink refresh rate was on par with other ebook devices, but that may be in part due to the size of the file that was open. The only "book" available to read was the user manual, which has about 10 chapters as far as I could tell, but it opened quickly and paging between pages was as quick as I could expect a device like this to be. It was somewhat faster than my sister's Sony ebook reader, and the eink display was much better than the glare ridden version that Sony put out.

For paging forward and backward, I wish the top button was forward and the bottom backward, it's more comfortable to balance it so my thumb is on the top one, and you're generally going to be paging forward rather than backward.

The back of the device gives you a good grip. I can't imagine that it will slip out of your hands on accident.

The bottom touch screen has a somewhat comvoluted menu system. I had a hard time navigating it, but I suppose you'll get used to it if you use it for a few days. It's hard to be too harsh with this after only playing with it for 5 minutes.

Overall, I'm going to keep my preorder. I waited until I got the Dec 11 ship date so I would have time to check out the store models and see the reviews. If I didn't like what I saw I still would have time to cancel the preorder. All things considered, it seemed like a product I would be happy to spend my 260 bucks on and I'm still looking forward to when it ships this Friday.

[Mac Jones]

very good

[lolita42]

was in barnes and noble this morning, they just set up their display, it was awesome, it lags a little, but stil miles above the kindle, so relax and enjoy!!!!

[Musicman]

I just got back from Barnes and Noble and played with the nook for about 10 minutes.

I found the eink display just as responsive as others. I don't understand the reviewers who said it was not reponsive - it was and the color lcd in fact was a little too sensitive.

I noticed it only had two fonts (I hope you will be able to add more).

The only negative I see is that they should increase the zoom level one more notch. The largest level is fine for most, but I prefer to be able to make the text larger. Hopefully firmware upgrades will add more zoom levels.

It felt good to hold and I had no problem reading Dan Browns the Lost Symbol.

I don't know how Epub or PDF will display, but I like what I've seen

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Hopefully, this will lead to the bigger development: an single format that all readers can access. We're heading toward ePUB at this point. And all three are using DRM at this point, so if any of these retailers croak, so do your books.

-Pie

B&N seems to be aware of this particular problem with DRM, which is why it isn't using the normal 'talk to our servers to authorize' form of it. Instead, they are using 'social DRM'. The idea is that by encrypting the content with an unchangeable password that they give you, but that you don't want to give out (say, your CC number in this case), it discourages casual piracy without going through the hoops of running servers to authorize content, or hiding the keys from the user. Adobe and B&N are working to get this scheme into the next ADE SDK so other sellers can go this route if they choose, and devices can load up this version of the DRM as well.

The advantage here is that even if B&N shuts down their eBook store, you still have the password required to unlock your books. As long as /some/ reader supports the right versions of the ADE SDK, you won't lose your B&N ePub books (the switch to ePub needs to happen before this is really true, they are still in that PDB format for now is my understanding).

It forms an interesting compromise of sorts in that they are actually trusting the user with the key outright, even if it is a key picked out specifically to discourage sharing. It also saves the seller some money by saving a bit on the cost of servers that can handle the authorization. The servers just need to be able to store a copy of the encrypted file, or the password hash (not the real password) that is used to generate the encryption key to encrypt the book on demand when you want to re-download it.

If nothing else comes from the nook, we'll see another option for DRM that is less reliant on the network find it's way into Adobe's SDK and Content Server platform. It's at least a step in the right direction, IMO.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by lolita42

was in barnes and noble this morning, they just set up their display, it was awesome, it lags a little, but stil miles above the kindle, so relax and enjoy!!!!

and your experience with a Kindle is....?

[lolita42]

i have a kindle, l love it, but there is no organization to it, thats my number 1 complaint, other than that its been my buddy for a year now, but the nook has more eye candy, and if your a gadget person, u would enjoy it.....

[qpid360]

C'mon B&N, I wanna see my status change to 'shipped' already.

[jmaloney]

Originally Posted by Musicman

I just got back from Barnes and Noble and played with the nook for about 10 minutes.

I found the eink display just as responsive as others. I don't understand the reviewers who said it was not reponsive - it was and the color lcd in fact was a little too sensitive.

I noticed it only had two fonts (I hope you will be able to add more).

The only negative I see is that they should increase the zoom level one more notch. The largest level is fine for most, but I prefer to be able to make the text larger. Hopefully firmware upgrades will add more zoom levels.

It felt good to hold and I had no problem reading Dan Browns the Lost Symbol.

I don't know how Epub or PDF will display, but I like what I've seen

I tried one today as well, and I agree with you mostly. There was definite lag on the LCD screen that I was using, but page turns and such on the eInk were fine. I had no complaints whatsoever about reading on the device. Contrary to what you said, there were three fonts on the device I was using: Amasis, Helvetica Neue, and Light Classic. There were also five font sizes. I tried out several different text sizes, and was able to read without issue on all of them (including the extra small setting).

B&N will need to improve the responsiveness of the LCD screen, IMO. Also, there was a feature described in the user manual for using a swiping gesture to turn pages that did not appear to be working on the unit I was using. Also I wondered if there were some connectivity problems in the store (or simply restrictions on the demo models), but I had a really difficult time navigating the eBook store on the demo unit. I'm not sure what the issue was, but I imagine it wasn't representative of the normal experience.

[Musicman]

Originally Posted by jmaloney

I tried one today as well, and I agree with you mostly. There was definite lag on the LCD screen that I was using, but page turns and such on the eInk were fine. I had no complaints whatsoever about reading on the device. Contrary to what you said, there were three fonts on the device I was using: Amasis, Helvetica Neue, and Light Classic. There were also five font sizes. I tried out several different text sizes, and was able to read without issue on all of them (including the extra small setting).

That's interesting that the unit you tried had three fonts - the one I tried did not have the light .

I tried all font sizes and I was able to read at all sizes - I just meant that I would like to see an additional zoom level.

The lag you are talking about is that on the LCD screen alone or between the LCD and eink?

I found the touch on the LCD sometimes sensitve - I think it will just be a matter of getting use to it.

My original pre-order is suppose to ship today, but I have not heard whether is will or be delayed like the first group..

[jmaloney]

The lag was definitely on the LCD screen. I'd touch an option, and a split second later, I'd see it highlighted on the LCD screen and get selected.