Classic Anyone get to try the Nook?

[jaxx6166]

I played with it today in the store. I really feel bad for the people behind the customer service counter. They're not really trained for the Nook. AT ALL.

I had asked a couple of specific questions and they needed to consult their product literature, and still weren't able to answer the question. I also brought my Kindle and my Sony with me to compare.

Unfortunately, while I was there - I think I sold an older woman a Kindle.

But, I really -REALLY- like the ergonomics of the Nook. I think it's more friendly in that respect. Especially considering it weighs significantly more than the Kindle and is much thicker than my 700.

Unfortunately, the page turns are agonizingly slow. There's almost a second delay between button press and page refresh. My K2 isn't the fastest horse in the race, but it still is miles ahead of the nook. The one good thing I like about my 700 is the super speedy refresh rate.

I also had issues with the left sided page turn buttons. It seems they need to travel further to do the same work as the right hand button. It also made more noise than the right side, so I don't know if it's a fault of that specific unit.

In regards to the refresh rate, I push the button after finishing the page and then it felt like forever before the next one appeared. I hope firmware fixes it.

My other gripe was the navigation screens could have been more user friendly. There seems to be too many clicks to do anything. And the touch screen doesn't really respond very well yet. I couldn't for the life of me get the finger swipe page turn down.

And it took me a while to figure out the little circle on the right side of the touch screen is the "Enter" button to actually select something. I also had difficulty with the Home screen and the power slider, which is a button. They didn't seem to want to respond to me either.

So - how does it stack up?

I really really like it. It feels solid. Kind of like a loved paperback book. It may be about as large as an old Hardy Boys novel or something...Just picture roughly a 120 page paperback book or another YA novel of similar size.

Once the LCD went to sleep I forgot it was even there, which was nice. But when it came on it was like a neon sign! I'm sure the lower brightness settings could help with that.

The buttons for the page turns felt solid, had a soft click to them. The one on the right side was a little softer than my K2 page click. The left side, a little louder. I like their placement.

This is getting long winded, so in summary i think B/N has the right idea. It may put my Kindle to the pasture.

We'll see what their rolling updates do. I don't want to preorder or purchase until there are a couple FW updates. I just hope their R/D and programming departments move faster than Sony's!

[rwizard]

I tried the nook in the store. I like the device, but I also think that the people that are critical of it have a right to be.

When I first started trying to use the nook it kept seeming to lock up and would not respond until I hit the "button" to go to the home screen. I turned off the nook and turned it back on and it seemed to be working after that. Based on this and the other reviews I have seen I would say that there is a memory leak somewhere in the software (some people report the devices not working at all, some reporting frequent errors, and some reporting that they did not have any errors. I did not see in any of the reviews claiming many errors or unresponsive device any indication that they attempted to reboot the device. Granted, this should not be necessary). Once it started working most of the interface seemed prety straight forward except any swiping gesture. For instance, I kept wanting to drag the scroll bar down when there were more options than the touch screen could show but you do not drag the scroll bar down like you would on a computer, you drag the page up. I ran into a similar problem when trying to get the swipe feature to turn the page, I kept swiping from left to right (the direction I wanted to go in the book was "to the right") once again as if I was scrolling but the swipe feature acts like you are reading a folded out book with all the writing on one side of the page, so you turn the page from right to left. I think this may be one of the reasons so many people cannot get this feature to work (or it could just be me ). Unfortunately, there is a noticeable delay, regardless of how you turn pages, between when you indicated you wanted to turn the page and when the device actually started refreshing the screen. the actual page turn time looked about the same as other readers I have seen but there is a significant lag between your indication that you would like to turn the page and when the device actually starts to "turn" the page. Other than these items, the touch screen keyboard, and other navigation seemed to work fine. I bought a book on the demo unit and that seemed to work well.

I like the potential of the nook and like it's price compared to other readers I am considering. I think that once I can come up with the cash (possibly after Christmas) I will probably buy one (and wait for it since they probably still won't be available in the stores at that point). I am willing to deal with the draw backs for the potential and price point of this device. Unfortunately I would, and have since I tried it myself, recommend the Sony 505 or 600 to anyone I know looking to get an ebook reader, the potential frustration is just to high.

Fore anyone wondering, I want something that reads EPUB since I am not interested in being permanently roped in to purchasing the same manufactures devices. If I get something that reads EPUB with Adobe DRM and I buy Adobe DRM ebooks then the odds of another ebook reader down the line being able to read them is pretty high, even if I don't want the current ebook reader manufactured by the same company. Also, esthetically, I just don't like the Kindle. Not saying it is a bad device, I just don't like it.