Barnes and Noble Nook Ebook Reader Review
Sharing Ebooks is Now as Easy as Sharing Paperbacks
Oct 28, 2009
For hundreds of years, people have been sharing books and music. While this concerned publishers (and some authors) because of the prospect of missing out sales and royalties, the consumer mostly didn't give this a second thought: "Hey, I just bought this great book by Famous Author! I'll lend it to you as soon as I've finished."
Now, Barnes and Noble have brought out a new eBook reader that actually encourages readers to lend eBooks. Admittedly, the ability to 'lend an eBook to a friend' is a Nook-to-Nook feature, but it's an idea that will be welcomed by countless readers. This is done easily and quickly by simply typing in the friend's email address. (It does, however, seem to be limited, judging by the information on the site: "You can lend many of your ebooks one time for a maximum of 14 days.")
Review of Nook Features
The Nook allows owners to access not only eBooks, but also eNewspapers and eMagazines. It's easy to download books using a 3G wireless connection same as cell phones), or by going to a Wi-Fi hotspot – and every Barnes & Noble store is a hotspot. There's no need to sign up for any kind of wireless contract.
The Nook uses a colour touchscreen (anyone familiar with the iPhone and other smartphones will be familiar with this), and simple icons to allow owners to either shop for new books, go to what they are currently reading, access their library of books, or go to the settings menu.
Until now, book addicts (who steadfastly maintain that 'a gadget will never replace a real book'!) have been most concerned about getting headaches from the screen's glare. A legitimate concern, since so many people who work with computers all day are only too familiar with eye-strain and headaches that go with the territory.
Today's eBook readers attack the problem head on, and the Nook uses the "E Ink® display" to ensure there's no glare and no reflection. It's also easy to adjust the size of the text – which is definitely something that the eBook reader has over a traditional paperback. Countless readers have made a decision against buying because of a tiny font that makes reading difficult. A bookmark feature makes it easy to go back to reading a novel from the last page read.
How Many Books can the Nook eBook Reader Store?
The Nook comes with 2 GB of internal memory – which stores around 1,500 eBooks – and is expandable to 16 GB via an SD card. The big benefit of an eBook reader, of course, is that it's such a cool gadget to take on a holiday. No need to weigh down a suitcase with half a dozen books... these would take up just a tiny amount of the space on the Nook!
The Nook owner can store other files on the device, too, including MP3s, PDFs and JPGs. (Photos of family and friends can be close at hand for display to anyone interested, and also can be used as a screesaver.)
There are other eBook readers around that have some of these features, but the Nook has made an effort to outstrip the pack.
Barnes & Noble Nook or Amazon Kindle?
Although other eBook readers have popped up from time to time, Amazon's Kindle has, until now, appeared to be the front runner. It was only a matter of time until another major player popped up to challenge the Kindle, and that is probably going to be the Nook eBook reader.
The Amazon Kindle eBook reader has a large user-base, but eBook fans were always destined to go the same way as cell phones and MP3/MP4 players: the huge appetite of the public for new and better features means that there will always be a market for devices that give people what they want.
Now that the Nook has started along that path, it's up to Amazon Kindle to make the next move... that is, of course, unless there's another new kid on the block ready to offer a bigger, better, shinier eBook reader to satisfy the masses. No doubt that will happen.
Meanwhile, the Nook book reader is out there, and voracious readers will be queuing up to buy.
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