The B&N NookFollow

Sorry if there is a thread already on book-readers. I'd like opinions.

My mother-in-law always gives me gift certificates to Barnes and Nobles and I never know what to buy with it as their books are generally more costly than anywhere else. So, I think I'm going to get a Nook.

Anyone have one?

Is there any reason to get the 3g thingy?

In general how does it compare with other readers?

Can you read any/all e-books on all the different readers?

If not, how does the book selection and pricing compare with Kindles?

If you buy two of them, you can tell Nook-Nook jokes!

Looking at the current nook, the one thing that bothered me about it, and is something that nearly all current generation e-book readers share, si the page redraw is slow. maybe about 2-3 times longer than it would take me to flip the page physically. That doesn't seem like a really big issue I suppose, but I read fast so it would be a problem for me. The current Kindle is supposedly faster, though I have not seen one. The universally hated Sony e-book readers that just came out have a reeeeely fast screen, but everything else about them is supposedly horible.

If I were to be handed money right this second and told I had to buy an ebook reader, I'd probably get the nook.

The 3G thingy gives you free wireless cell phone book purchasing ability and possibly some internet browsing capability anywhere in the U.S. in range of a cell tower. If you get a nook, I'd get that.

I don't know enough about them to really answer your question there, but most of the e-book formats should be reasable by most of the readers. I know there are some digital rights management (DRM) issues wth kindles and nooks, so though the physical file itself may be readable on both devices, the file may be tied to just the one device for copyright purposes. Both of them will read pdf and the Baen free library though!

Book selection is getting better, you will tend to find all the new bestsellers, and alot of older special interest stuff. it's the slightly old not really best sellers in the middle of the series that may be kind of hard to find. Infuriatingly, the e-book price is often higher than the paper price for some arcane reason having to deal with writer royalties and certain publishing houses being utter doucebags about it.

Do different e-readers specialize in different genres???

I think I'll just go with the nook. I've got a back-up now of two gift certificates and it's only $150.00 bucks. The slow page redraw time seems lame though. Regular book print is getting hard for me to read. An e-book seems less agey than reading glasses.

I have a Kobo. It's similar to the Nook from what I've read. The page turning isn't really an issue, you get so you just automatically it the turn page button as you're reading the last paragraph and the page changes as your eyes move back to the top (the rewrite is near instant it's the processing that is delayed a second or two.)

The ability to resize text is nice.

Get Calibre, it catalogs all of your books and converts them to the best format for your particular book reader. It also handles transferring books to your device. The software that comes with ebook readers tends to be bloated featureless shopware and ebook readers do not usually read a multitude of formats so without conversion software you will be locked into the B&N store.

There are tons of free books out there, and tons more $2-$3 books.

baen
Project Gutenberg
mobileread forums (and free books)

There are ways of getting lots and lots of mainstream ebooks for free, but if you go that route I suggest supporting the authors of any books you like so they will continue writing.

My daughter has a Nook and from what little I seen of it, I would get one for myself, if I could afford it. It was very easy to get the hang of and I found that "turning" the pages soon seem normal.

That's not actually true. The kindle supports pdf's natively but offers a free conversion for other documents you have like word or whatever, and they'll also reflow a pdf to work better on your kindle.

They also support the Mobi ebook format, which is super easy to convert to from epub, and completely legal. Project gutenburg offers direct downloads in kindle format, but calibre is a free tool that will convert from any non drm format to any other non drm format of which mobi is one.

While the available books for the kindle is still slightly higher then the nook, mostly due to an earlier start, they're both pretty close. Once a publisher releases a book for an e-reader, it's easy for them to release it for the other e-readers, and they almost always do.

Public domain books of course can be read on all the different readers easily.

As I said before the nook is cool, but wait for the next version, the new e-ink pearl screen is simply a huge step up in terms of quality.

I completely agree on the 3G part, I just got the wireless version. If you really really need a new book, just find a coffee shop somewhere, they are not exactly uncommon.

Edited, Oct 18th 2010 6:05pm by Xsarus