Nook Buyers Remorse

[ManosHandsOfFate]

Hi All!

I discovered this forum the other day and have become enamored.

My wife bought me a Nook for my birthday (at my suggestion). The biggest selling point for me was the ePub support and the possibility of checking eBooks out of the library. I also liked the idea of the touchscreen and soft buttons.

Flash forward a few days after getting it and the reflectivity of the touchscreen is driving me nuts. It's particularly bad when the touchscreen is off/black. I can totally see my own ugly mug and/or any overhead lights. It's really distracting. I don't really like having to carefully angle the device to avoid the reflection. I also find the shiny white bezel distracting.

I put in my pre-order for the Kindle 3. There's no reflective touchscreen, and the bezel is matte. I'm also quite interested in the new higher contrast e-ink display.

However, I'm annoyed that the Kindle doesn't support ePub.

It sounds like Sony is coming out with some new models soon. I can wait a bit but I'm not going to put this off for months.

Any thoughts on what I can possibly expect from Sony? I've heard the current gen touch screen model had reflectivity issues. Is that always going to be a problem for touch screens?

Do you all think other manufacturers will quickly start adopting the newer pearl e-ink display or is Amazon going to lock that one down for themselves for a while?

[Logseman]

You can expect a model with no touch screen from Sony. It's a small model, PRS-350, with a 5 inch screen, probably Pearl (Sony bought its bunch alongisde with Amazon, too: no other manufacturers will get hold of them for a while though). The other model, PRS-650, has a touch screen, but nobody knows how it will work. However, the PRS-600 and 900's screens (like the 700's one) performed underwhelmingly, so Sony will need to do something spectacular about that if they want to keep their edge.

The matter with shiny touch screens come due to the fact that the touchable layer comes in front of the screen. Wacom touch screens, on the other hand, do not present any issues of gloss, with the "cost" (your mileage may vary, as they say) of having to use a special stylus to operate the screen: the touchable layer is behind the e-Ink screen, forcing you to use the stylus for your commands to be recognised as simply touching it with your fingers doesn't work.

If you're open to wait for a while, you can examine Pocketbook's new models too. They have 2 incoming models of 6 inches: one shall have no touchscreen, and the other one does have a Wacom screen. They'll sport Vizplex screens, no Pearl.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Logseman

You can expect a model with no touch screen from Sony. It's a small model, PRS-350, with a 5 inch screen,

The 350?
The last reports I've seen list it with a touch screen.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/19/s...er-on-a-charg/
New info?

[ManosHandsOfFate]

Thanks. I'll take a look at the Pocketbooks. Now if only Sony would release more details. . .

[AdrianM]

I also found the Nook to be a disappointment - you can see my thread here; https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93750

Honestly, I don't understand the praise the touch screen gets; it's more annoying than anything with its reflections and glare from overhead lights and the clunky GUI.

I've been forcing myself to try to get used to it by reading a few books but every now and then one of the very annoying features shows its ugly head and I find them impossible to ignore. So distracting and so unnecessary. Thankfully the designers of the new K3 had far more sense and focused on what makes for a good reading experience.

FWIW, I also considered a Sony but dismissed their current 6inch model because of the touch screen glare and reduced contrast. The 5 inch was too small. I wish I'd found a used 505 on ebay now instead of getting the Nook though.

[comma]

no buyer's remorse here. it has been fantastic for me, specially epub support

[Ryan_Phx]

I'm with comma--I love my Nook, and I don't find the touchscreen distracting at all. When I'm reading, I don't even notice it, and I've never had cause to complain about the navigation. To each his own, I guess.

[AdrianM]

Originally Posted by comma

no buyer's remorse here. it has been fantastic for me, specially epub support

Yep, hardware aside, that's the main reason I bought it. It turns out, for anyone with even the slightest smidgen of technical skills, it's not even worth considering as conversion to just about any other format is trivial and, if necessary, DRM removal is also possible.

So, for me, the main reason I can see that people would want the Nook over, say the new Kindle or a Sony (both of which in my opinion are technically superior products), is for the B&N in store reading experience. Honestly, why pay more for a screen that's less good than the Kindle, has more glare and reflectivity issues than a Kindle or Sony, and has shorter battery charge than either? Yes, people want memory "expandability" but really, 1 out of how many really need that? 1:100? 1:1000?

If anyone is going to do touch screen on an eReader they should look at how iRex did it - it's the perfect compromise and the most usable implementation without interfering with eInk readability.

[namebrandon]

Originally Posted by AdrianM

Y It turns out, for anyone with even the slightest smidgen of technical skills, ... conversion to just about any other format is trivia

And this is why I don't even bother paying attention to format support any longer. Unless you've got a large collection of .imp files or something else strange, Calibre or other tools can convert and make format support (or lack thereof) a non-issue.

[Logseman]

Calibre doesn't handle .doc files. Your misery starts right there if you can't convert them in batch to a Calibre-supported format.

[Logseman]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The 350?
The last reports I've seen list it with a touch screen.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/19/s...er-on-a-charg/
New info?

I stand corrected. I mistook it for another device. So far, all sources point to the Sony PRS-350 having a touchscreen.

[namebrandon]

Originally Posted by Logseman

Calibre doesn't handle .doc files. Your misery starts right there if you can't convert them in batch to a Calibre-supported format.

It can be done easily, though for batch conversion it's not a simple one-click solution like Calibre.

.doc -> .rtf
or
.doc -> .pdf
or (technically)
.doc -> .html

JODConverter (command line)
http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/jodconverter

[MangaEbooker]

Originally Posted by AdrianM

Yep, hardware aside, that's the main reason I bought it. It turns out, for anyone with even the slightest smidgen of technical skills, it's not even worth considering as conversion to just about any other format is trivial and, if necessary, DRM removal is also possible.

So, for me, the main reason I can see that people would want the Nook over, say the new Kindle or a Sony (both of which in my opinion are technically superior products), is for the B&N in store reading experience. Honestly, why pay more for a screen that's less good than the Kindle, has more glare and reflectivity issues than a Kindle or Sony, and has shorter battery charge than either? Yes, people want memory "expandability" but really, 1 out of how many really need that? 1:100? 1:1000?

If anyone is going to do touch screen on an eReader they should look at how iRex did it - it's the perfect compromise and the most usable implementation without interfering with eInk readability.

Pluses for me of the Nook: Touch screen makes it so much better to me for turning pages, removable battery, memory slots, Softroot support for homebrew, also imo it just looks nicer. These are all things the Kindle 3 does not have, its preference.

Also the screen is Just fine, Kindles may be better but will it be a world of difference when it comes to clarity of reading, I somehow doubt it.

[AdrianM]

Originally Posted by MangaEbooker

Pluses for me of the Nook: Touch screen makes it so much better to me for turning pages, removable battery, memory slots, Softroot support for homebrew, also imo it just looks nicer.

I'm curious why 4GB wouldn't be enough for you? Or even 2 or 1GB for that matter. Unless you don't have a laptop and an MP3 player and need to store your entire collection of books, audiobooks and music on the eReader...?

And how often do you anticipate changing that battery?

I don't understand the swipe turning preference either as it requires two hands on the Nook.

Originally Posted by MangaEbooker

Also the screen is Just fine, Kindles may be better but will it be a world of difference when it comes to clarity of reading, I somehow doubt it.

We'll see but those that have seen it say it's noticeable. And that's a gain for something that costs less...

[Xenophon]

For me, the big deal with the nook is having convenient access to my entire library, all on the device at the same time. Doing this requires soft-rooting the nook, and using three pieces of software: two on your computer (Calibre, calibre2opds) and one on your nook (trook).

• Use Calibre to organize your eBooks. Specifically, get the authors, titles, and series set up correctly.
• Use calibre2opds to produce a catalog of your books and then copy both catalog and books to the add-on memory card on your nook.
• Use trook to browse your newly created catalog on the nook.

The key things here are that calibre2opds produces an opds-formatted catalog of the books (by reading the Calibre data), and that trook knows how to read, display and navigate that catalog.

You can drill into your library:

• by series
• by author
• by title
• by date added
• by tag

(and maybe more). In each case, trook displays a reasonable set of choices for drilling in farther: (e.g. "Series starting with 1", "Series starting with "A", "Series starting with "B", etc.).

This combination supports something that is not currently possible with the built-in software of any stand-alone ebook reading device -- fast and convenient access to any book in a multi-thousand volume library!

Xenophon