Husband and I were at the Barnes and Noble this evening after dinner at Appleby’s with my brother and his wife!
B&N had a table filled with Nook readers, ready to go. It was fun to turn them on and play with them. A B&N rep came by and shared a couple of ‘nifty’ features:
if you purchase an e-book from B&N for your Nook…you can “loan” the book to a Nook enabled friend for up to 2 weeks, no cost! During the 2 weeks, you will not have access to the book. It is just as if you loaned a literal book to them. But after 2 weeks, the Nook software whisks the book out of their Nook and sends it back to your Nook!
You have a free 3G wi-fi network with which to add e-books to your Nook.
You can “send” your Nook books to your computer and to your cellphone, thereby enabling you to read your book(s) on either of the 3 pieces of equipment: computer, cell phone, or Nook
You do not have to sign up for a cell phone service to use your Nook downloadable features.
You can upgrade your internal SD memory card to add more books, however, it hold 1500 books.
There is a full color homepage strip under the reading part of the Nook. Your features, etc are in full color.
I have heard that Kindle will soon allow you to “loan” books to friends with Kindles. That is the only feature the Nook has that the Kindle doesn’t.
My hubby has the Sony E-Reader… the major drawback is that he cannot read Nook or Kindle formats. However, it can read PDFs, .doc, and .lit quite easily. Which is good because I have over 10K books in .lit form that I have to reformat to .mobi to read on my Kindle and sometimes that conversion does not make it easy to read.
I thought Nook was the way to go till I saw this posted in the other thread.
They all sound awesome when you read about them, but I think what it comes down to is there isn’t one perfect reader yet. They all have something lacking so it’s like buying a house… figure out what flaws you can live with and what you can’t.
I too LOVE my Kindle!! It’s the best gift I’ve gotten in a long time! I read at least an hour every day, so it’s gotten a good bit of use since Christmas! I Love it dearly!
I’m holding off for a year or two. Gonna wait and see how the e-readers evolve.
I’m especially turned off by the incompatibility issues. Can’t read Amazon e-books with Nook, can’t read Nook books with Sony e-Reader…etc. etc. If I own a darn e-book…I should be able to use any e-reader to read it. Until that happens, I feel e-books are very limiting. I don’t like it.
Well, at least MY EYES can read any ole darn book!
I don’t think bookstores will be going out of business any time soon!
Exactly! We go to the used book stores a lot and use the library, too. I have 3 book readers on my iPod Touch and I use them when I’m at a doctor/hairdresser etc when I don’t want to bring a book. Unless I bring knitting which happens on occasion.
How do you reformat to something so it can be read on a Kindle or nook? I don’t have a big eBook library at the moment (thankfully) but they’re on Adobe Digital Editions. I’m thinking about asking for either a nook or a kindle (I read too fast to reasonably carry the number of books that I can read on the average long-distance trip… so while I like my books in hard copy, I’m being sucked towards eBook readers…), but I wish I could put my current eBooks on whichever I get.
Or, I could go with a Sony reader, and then I can’t buy ebooks from Amazon or B&N, which is 90% of my book purchases.
I’m also waiting on the i-Pad to evolve. Waiting to see if it, or another similar, will be more of a universally useful device.
I read an article in the Sunday paper, about e-readers. The main point that stood out was the growing pains of this new device.
The article said that the market will never be able to sustain so many versions. So, after all the cards are on the table, there will be a “last man standing”. One that has weathered the fire storm of innovation, and remains as the best, the baddest, and hopefully, the most affordable.
The article said that e-readers will never become mainstream until they lower to $99 for a decent reader.
Few analysts believe the current number of e-reader devices on the market is sustainable, especially with more tablet devices on the way. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Google all have them in development.
Amazon will benefit from having its Kindle app available on the iPad, especially because its own e-reader doesn’t have a color display. A IDG analyst said that 'we don’t think it’s sufficient for Amazon to go with only a bl/wh display Kindle.
Yes, I agree! Perhaps the iPad will “push” others to integrate more features. However, there are carrots, there are peas. The iPad is in another class from stand-alone devices such as the Kindle or Nook.
I bought the nook before all the upgrades you mentioned came about. Originally you could share books but there was no web, games and more. You can now read ebooks in the store as part of their upgrade. I love my nook!!!
Art Lady, It’s so apropos that these new gadgets are debuting in the early 21st century. It’s still true, the more things change the more they stay the same. I remember when railway co.s in the early 19th century including the Transcontinental railroad was put on line. From Pennsylvania to Utah was one honkin’, long, expensive trip Each rail co. made their tracks in a different gauge (does this mean I’m not off topic?) so when you got to the end of one line you had to switch to the next train’s gauge and buy another ticket. So what’s different with pads, pods, kindles and nooks? The sharing and caring may come but for now it’s every billionaire for him/herself This is called the spirit of entrepreneurship which is a quaint euphemism for - "I’m getting mine before somebody does it better and I’m out of the market!!"
Talk about peas and carrots - this is succotash!! I think it will always be so. How about you? Jean
The e-reader technology is still rather new, so there are no standards, except for the Kindle and Nook, which are proprietary. However, you can convert e-books and send them to your reader.
When the best mouse-trap is made then there will come a standard (think DVD and Blu-Ray). In this case, porn and gamers will not decide the format. Book readers will decide which format will eventually take over the e-reader business. I’m OK with that and I’m patient.
While the Kindle standard is proprietary, the Nook and Sony software is not. Both use Adobe epub, although each one has their own DRM attached. If the DRM is removed, then the book can be read on any epub-capable device.
(Kindle books would not only need the DRM removed, but the books would also have to be converted to another format in order to be read on other devices.)
That seems to be the current direction that ebook publishers are moving – Sony’s BBeB format is no longer available in their store and B&N’s eReader format is being gradually replaced by epub.
Books that are non-DRM’d epub formatted can be read on the Sony, Nook, and iPad, as well as other readers currently on the market. (Fictionwise, owned by B&N, is one of my sources for books to read on my Sony since their books do not have DRM.)
If it is does not have DRM, you can use a program called Calibreto convert it to whatever format you need. If your books work in ADE, they probably will already work in any of the readers that you listed.
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iPed with that latin root ped (like that in pedestrian) it will be a heads up display (HUD) attachment for your eye glasses thus enabling you to walk and read books at the same time. :thud:
:roflhard:
You can even read a different book than the one you are holding open in class. [/COLOR]
Too funny, Jack. Guess I’m just a Luddite, like the feel of a paper book, which also guilts me thinking of all the trees…thank God for public libraries, is all i can say. linknit1
