Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book Readers > Barnes & Noble NOOK

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 10-27-2009, 06:07 PM   #1
tautologico
Member
tautologico is on a distinguished road
 
Posts: 22
Karma: 50
Join Date: Oct 2009
Device: Kindle 2 International
A new Kindle user's take on the nook

Hi, I bought a Kindle 2 (international) recently and already read a good number of useful posts here on this forum, so I registered.

Anyway, yesterday and today I was reading about the nook. At first the announced features almost made me regret the kindle purchase, but now, after reading the posts here clarifying some points, I'm seeing that the nook is not significantly better than the kindle as I thought. (Nevermind that the nook is not available internationally, this would be a nuisance).

The features that caught my eye were:
  • Native PDF support
  • Larger catalog (1 million according to B&N)
  • Support to book lending

Some of the other features were less compelling, only slightly useful or almost useless. But then I found some additional facts in these forums:
  • You can't zoom on PDFs. Coupled with the small screen size, it'll probably make PDFs unreadable, and that's why I'd like to get a Kindle DX.
  • Book lending has the limits already talked about: only once and only for 14 days. I wanted this feature mostly to trade books with my girlfriend so we didn't need to buy some books twice, but she reads more slowly and I don't always have time to read, so the 14-days limitation makes this feature nearly useless for me.

And the less compelling features are not game changers for me:
  • SD Card: nice to have, but not that important. I can unload books I don't want to read in the near future to my PC or just re-download them later from Amazon if I want to read them. 2Gb is good enough to carry the books I'm currently reading or plan to read in the near future.
  • LCD touchscreen: navigation in the Kindle could be improved, but the sore point of this for me is having to move a lot using the 5-way to get to a word (to highlight, add a note or search for a definition), and the partial touchscreen in the nook doesn't solve this. The Sony devices which are all touchscreen improve navigation but at the cost of readability, and this I don't like.

So what remains is the larger catalog. However, we'll have to see, because it doesn't make much sense for publishers to sell their ebooks through just one vendor, when they can make them available to others for very little cost. So I won't be surprised if shortly after the nook's release the catalogs of Amazon and B&N have almost the same size. However, if this doesn't change, then it is a serious problem for the Kindle.

Anyway, I think competition is good for everyone that likes eReaders, and if things go on at this pace soon we'll all have better devices than the current ones.
tautologico is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-28-2009, 01:25 PM   #2
DaleDe
Grand Sorcerer
DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
DaleDe's Avatar
 
Posts: 11,470
Karma: 13095790
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Grass Valley, CA
Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7
There is generally no need to zoom PDF's if you have reflow. Only pictures need zooming and only a few PDF's use pictures for text. Read our wiki. Don't take on stuff until you have more facts.

Dale
DaleDe is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Old 10-28-2009, 01:46 PM   #3
=X=
Wizard
=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
=X='s Avatar
 
Posts: 3,671
Karma: 12205348
Join Date: Mar 2008
Device: Galaxy S, Nook w/CM7
Quote:
Originally Posted by tautologico View Post
t
The features that caught my eye were:
  • Native PDF support
  • Larger catalog (1 million according to B&N)

  • You can't zoom on PDFs. Coupled with the small screen size, it'll probably make PDFs unreadable, and that's why I'd like to get a Kindle DX.
  • Book lending has the limits already talked about: only once and only for 14 days. I wanted this feature mostly to trade books with my girlfriend so we didn't need to buy some books twice, but she reads more slowly and I don't always have time to read, so the 14-days limitation makes this feature nearly useless for me.
* Larger catalog: Carefull here over 750,000 books are from google. The world has access to thos books B&N just integrated google through their Book store. So in reality B&N has 250K books amazon has 350K. Also the SONY store has access to the same books. The bad thing is those books are in ePUB format and have been OCR'd using google technology. And man they are awful.

* Zooming is a real nice to have esp if you read books with charts and graphs.

* PDF Reflow I can't stand it the SONY/Adobe did such a bad job chances are it will look just as bad on the nook. I tend to read my PDF w/o reflow and take the time to strip off the margin and header/footers.

* KindleDX is probably the way to go, but my understanding is there are some limitations on the PDF support.

* Book Lending not really a plus if your close to your GF you can add her device with your account, all eInk support (SONY, Amazon, Adobe) and there is no limit on how long you can lend a book doing it this way. The down side is you share a credit card/account.
=X= is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-28-2009, 09:01 PM   #4
nremondelli
Zealot
nremondelli is on a distinguished road
 
Posts: 122
Karma: 52
Join Date: Nov 2008
Device: none
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleDe View Post
There is generally no need to zoom PDF's if you have reflow. Only pictures need zooming and only a few PDF's use pictures for text. Read our wiki. Don't take on stuff until you have more facts.

Dale
Tsk Tsk, Dale. Manners. You should learn some.
nremondelli is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-29-2009, 11:56 AM   #5
tautologico
Member
tautologico is on a distinguished road
 
Posts: 22
Karma: 50
Join Date: Oct 2009
Device: Kindle 2 International
Quote:
Originally Posted by =X= View Post
* Larger catalog: Carefull here over 750,000 books are from google. The world has access to thos books B&N just integrated google through their Book store. So in reality B&N has 250K books amazon has 350K. Also the SONY store has access to the same books. The bad thing is those books are in ePUB format and have been OCR'd using google technology. And man they are awful.

* Zooming is a real nice to have esp if you read books with charts and graphs.

* PDF Reflow I can't stand it the SONY/Adobe did such a bad job chances are it will look just as bad on the nook. I tend to read my PDF w/o reflow and take the time to strip off the margin and header/footers.

* KindleDX is probably the way to go, but my understanding is there are some limitations on the PDF support.

* Book Lending not really a plus if your close to your GF you can add her device with your account, all eInk support (SONY, Amazon, Adobe) and there is no limit on how long you can lend a book doing it this way. The down side is you share a credit card/account.
Good points, especially about the catalog. I didn't know that.

As for PDFs, following your indication in the other thread I tried PaperCrop and it does a very good job. I generate images and put them in the picture folder of the Kindle, and it works (except for gif images, the kindle didn't like them). It is not the ideal but it serves as a stop-gap solution to read papers on the small screen.
tautologico is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Kindle vs. nook in Canada - nook seems to have cheaper ebooks Doju Which one should I buy? 16 07-24-2010 02:47 PM
Kindle DX User's Guide, 4th Edition advocate2 Amazon Kindle 0 07-13-2010 01:13 PM
PRS-900 PRS-900 User's Guide igorsk Sony Reader 7 12-10-2009 02:14 PM
3rd Edition of Kindle 2 User's Guide Now Available sirbruce Amazon Kindle 5 04-22-2009 08:55 AM
Research on E-books and user's opinions vince_on_fire News 18 05-15-2008 05:17 PM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:56 AM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.