B&N to release NOOK GlowLight 3

[ZodWallop]

I went in to B&N today to check out the Glowlight 3 and it's a really, really nice device.

The version of Treasure Island (which I'm coincidentally reading currently) on the display model was messed up. Pages out of order between chapters 16 and 17. It would be easy enough to fix in Sigil I think, but that got me to thinking about how it's in the walled off partition and inaccessible. So I'd have to sideload a book that's already on the device to read it.

I'll still be buying one as a gift, but for myself I'll either stick with my Aura or get the Glowlight Plus.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by barryem

I do have a comment about these review videos. One feature that's important to me gets all but ignored by the reviewers and that's the margin size in settings. I like wide margins when I read because I think I read faster and easier that way without struggling to get back to the start of the next line. It just ssems more graceful to me. I realize I'm in the minority with this.

The problem is that I never see the margins in these video reviews. Everything is done with the narrow margins. I'd like to see all three margins compared.

This is a feature that's never reviewed or compared in any videos by any reviewer and I think it's worth taking a look at.

Barry, I played with the margins on the Glowlight 3 and the narrowest is as rcentros said, about an inch/inch and a quarter in from the screen on each side.

You have a Plus. With the newest update, the software seems to be the same as the 3 (I think). It ought to give you a good idea anyway.

[JSWolf]

There's no way I would pay for B&N's stupidity. All that's doing is telling B&N that it's OK to be stupid and partition the memory.

[lkmiller]

Black Friday deal for the Glowlight 3 will be $100.

Here's their deals page:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/h/bla...r-monday-deals

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There's no way I would pay for B&N's stupidity. All that's doing is telling B&N that it's OK to be stupid and partition the memory.

I agree in principle. I bought a NOOK to tell B&N that it was OK to revive the Simple Touch body style, which many of us loved. To tell them that it was OK to produce the best night backlight in the business. To tell them that it was OK to keep trying to provide SOME competition for Amazon. To tell them it was OK to keep supporting epub format books.

And what are you telling them? Would you buy this device, even if it had no memory partition? Are you going to buy any ebooks from the B&N Store? If not, why should Barnes and Noble care what you think? If you are not a customer, then clearly this device was not designed with you in mind. To B&N, you don't matter.

Your relentless criticism and negativity are not helping. If you have no interest in buying or using this device, then why waste your time (and ours) continually tearing it down?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There's no way I would pay for B&N's stupidity. All that's doing is telling B&N that it's OK to be stupid and partition the memory.

Yeah ... you were waiting outside Barnes & Noble's door at 3 A.M. on November 8th so you could be first in line for the all new GlowLight 3 ... and then (as luck would have it) you heard that they partitioned the memory wrong! You must have been devastated. Poor thing.

I think we've got it. You don't like Barnes & Noble, you don't like their devices ... but you LOVE droning on incessantly about Barnes & Noble and running down their devices.

Honestly, I think you think that if the Barnes & Noble eBook division went under and they quit selling Nooks altogether, that this would clear the deck for Kobo and Kindle to go "head to head." I've got news for you. Most people in the U.S. (outside of MobileRead members and those in a few sites like it) don't even know who/what/where Kobo is. If Barnes & Noble goes away, basically all you have left in the U.S. is Amazon. Be careful what you wish for.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

I agree in principle. I bought a NOOK to tell B&N that it was OK to revive the Simple Touch body style, which many of us loved. To tell them that it was OK to produce the best night backlight in the business. To tell them that it was OK to keep trying to provide SOME competition for Amazon. To tell them it was OK to keep supporting epub format books.

Exactly. When I buy a Nook GlowLight 3 (sooner or later) it will be for the reasons detailed above, DESPITE the fact I don't like the memory partitioning.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

Black Friday deal for the Glowlight 3 will be $100.

Here's their deals page:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/h/bla...r-monday-deals

I've been watching. Thanks for the link.

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Exactly. When I buy a Nook GlowLight 3 (sooner or later) it will be for the reasons detailed above, DESPITE the fact I don't like the memory partitioning.

You won't regret it. Set the light to "warm" and fairly dim to generate a mellow parchment look.

[javyn]

Upgraded from a Nook ST this week. I love it. I like the big bezel for easy holding and the page turn buttons. Even with a clip on light, reading my ST at night was still too harsh on my eyes. This with the color temp adjustments fits the bill. I just wish more covers were out already.

I don't quite understand the complaining over the side loading limit. This is a BN device, you should be happy they give you any space for side loading at all. This is still more open than an Amazon device since it reads epubs and you aren't stuck with mobi.

I side load a lot of content, and the 1 gig isn't going to be a problem for me. Hell, having half of that on my ST was never a problem. The device just isn't going to keep up trying to index over a gig of books. Heh, when my friend stuck a 4 gig SD card full of books into his ST, the OS crapped itself. I ended up just using the SD card I bought for my Nook ST for something else, so lack of a microSD on the 3 doesn't mean anything to me either.

To me, it's an epub reader with a great rez and night screen. I wouldn't want to sideload my entire library of epubs onto it anyway, even if I could. Has the features I want for considerably less $$ than the Kobos, plus the nice fat bezel the Kobos lack. I'm very happy with it already.

edit: Also, I don't understand what kinda lunatic tries to read PDFs on an e-ink device. I use a full size, mid-range Samsung tablet for that.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

I agree in principle. I bought a NOOK to tell B&N that it was OK to revive the Simple Touch body style, which many of us loved. To tell them that it was OK to produce the best night backlight in the business. To tell them that it was OK to keep trying to provide SOME competition for Amazon. To tell them it was OK to keep supporting epub format books.

It is not the best front light in the business. The nook is no competition to Amazon because they botched side loading. The issue is that Amazon did not cripple the Kindle's storage. Those that want to side load can and those that don't are still OK with the full available storage. In either case for the nook, you are getting less storage. eOub is a good thing. But if you want ePub without the divided memory, Kobo does a very nice job. As for the form factor, if I am not mistaken, I think it's a bit larger than the nook STR.

And what are you telling them? Would you buy this device, even if it had no memory partition? Are you going to buy any ebooks from the B&N Store? If not, why should Barnes and Noble care what you think? If you are not a customer, then clearly this device was not designed with you in mind. To B&N, you don't matter.

I have bought eBooks from B&N and I still do occasionally. I also own a nook STR so to B&N, I am one of their customers.

Your relentless criticism and negativity are not helping. If you have no interest in buying or using this device, then why waste your time (and ours) continually tearing it down?

I'm tearing down what I feel is a feature that's not a feature. It's a disaster. If B&N had not screwed with the storage, I would have been happy to tell people if they want a 6" 300DPI reader to have a look at the new nook. But I cannot in good conscience recommend this. There is a thread on MR and it seems a lot of people like to have as many eBooks on their device as they can fit and given that the nook may not even fit 100 eBooks, it's not for your average MR user.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by javyn

I don't quite understand the complaining over the side loading limit. This is a BN device, you should be happy they give you any space for side loading at all. This is still more open than an Amazon device since it reads epubs and you aren't stuck with mobi.

Current Kindles are not stuck with Mobi. They can handle KF8 and KFX. KF8 is Amazon's ePub like format (in terms of coding).

I side load a lot of content, and the 1 gig isn't going to be a problem for me. Hell, having half of that on my ST was never a problem. The device just isn't going to keep up trying to index over a gig of books. Heh, when my friend stuck a 4 gig SD card full of books into his ST, the OS crapped itself. I ended up just using the SD card I bought for my Nook ST for something else, so lack of a microSD on the 3 doesn't mean anything to me either.

I did some random tests and I got a result that said I could only side load 63 eBooks. The size of ePub is increasing with things like hi-res covers, hi-res title pages, embedded fonts and maybe other graphics. I've seen some ePub that are around 400MB. How many eBooks would be enough?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by javyn

I don't quite understand the complaining over the side loading limit. This is a BN device, you should be happy they give you any space for side loading at all. This is still more open than an Amazon device since it reads epubs and you aren't stuck with mobi.

Don't be crazy now. I like the Nook and want it to succeed, but saying it's more open than the Kindle is just clearly not true. To Amazon's credit, the entire memory is open for sideloading. Barnes and Noble is the only ereader seller that partitions their memory like that and it really is aggravating.

If the memory wasn't partitioned, or even was just partitioned more sensibly (3.5 for them, 3 for me), I'd be buying two of them. Now I won't.

Since the Nook STwG was replaced with the Glowlight and it was limited to 512MB, I moved to Kobo. I've been buying my books from Amazon. I'd be happy to move back to B&N and the Glowlight 3 hardware won me over. But then the sideloading issue came up.

I don't want to purchase books I already own again because B&N decided to lock me out of all that memory. And though I understand I could load a lot of books on the .95GB left available, I currently have 2.5 worth on my Aura. Having to choose which books to leave off would be frustrating.

I side load a lot of content, and the 1 gig isn't going to be a problem for me. Hell, having half of that on my ST was never a problem. The device just isn't going to keep up trying to index over a gig of books. Heh, when my friend stuck a 4 gig SD card full of books into his ST, the OS crapped itself. I ended up just using the SD card I bought for my Nook ST for something else, so lack of a microSD on the 3 doesn't mean anything to me either.

I used a 32GB card with 2.5GB of books and my Nook didn't have trouble.

To me, it's an epub reader with a great rez and night screen. I wouldn't want to sideload my entire library of epubs onto it anyway, even if I could. Has the features I want for considerably less $$ than the Kobos, plus the nice fat bezel the Kobos lack. I'm very happy with it already.

edit: Also, I don't understand what kinda lunatic tries to read PDFs on an e-ink device. I use a full size, mid-range Samsung tablet for that.

You'll find no argument there. I'm tired of hearing about the bezel. You need to be able to hold the thing. If the screen isn't any smaller, what's wrong with a fat bezel?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It is not the best front light in the business.

What is the best front light in the business and how did you reach your conclusion?

The high-res screen, buttons and color changing light make it the best 6" e-reader available, hardware wise.

Kobo has better software, but the Glowlight 3 outclasses the Aura Edition 2 in every way. While I like the Kobo software, I'd give it up today for the Glowlight 3 if they hadn't so severely partitioned the memory.

[javyn]

Overall I still consider it more open due to the file format. You just aren't going to find too much mobi, and whatever that new Amazon format you mention is that I've never even heard of, outside of Amazon's sphere.

I do concede though I'm obviously asking much less of the device than others here, or that my needs are just a little different hehe. I'm fine managing my ebook collection on my network storage and just dragging what I need as I need it to the Nook from my laptop or whatever.

Kobo Aura One looks great, the bigger screen would be really nice. But that price tag, and yes, tiny bezel, heh.

My biggest grype about the Glow 3 is actually that it's a diff size than the ST, making me have to buy a new cover.