Hey, Nook! Barnes & Noble’s E-Book Reader is Official
By Harry McCracken | Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The salient details had all leaked out already, but now they’re real: Barnes & Noble has unveiled its e-book reader. It’s called the Nook, it packs both a 6″ e-ink screen and a color touch one below, and comes both 3G and WiFi, 2GB of memory, and an SD slot. The Nook will offer both bestsellers and other new releases (“many” at $9.99) and over a million titles in total, including free public-domain works. It costs $259–the same as Amazon.com’s cheapest Kindle–and is due to ship by the end of November.
Oh, and it syncs with Barnes & Noble’s e-reading software for PCs, Macs, iPhones, and BlackBerries, and has a lending feature that lets you virtually loan an e-book to a friend for two weeks. Let’s op
As with Spring Design’s Alex, the Nook’s two-screen design feels like a kludge to deal with the deficiencies that both e-ink and color LCDs still have. (The color display has an impact on the Nook’s battery life: ten days on a charge, vs. fourteen for the Kindle.) But maybe it’s an elegant kludge–I look forward to getting my hands on a Nook soon.
The single thing about the Nook that I’m most excited about is something kind of mundane: Like Sony’s Readers–but unlike the Kindle–it supports the industry-standard ePub format, and therefore doesn’t render your book purchases worthless if you someday decide to switch to an electronic reader made by someone else. I’m a mostly happy Kindle owner, but the current explosion of interesting alternatives from other companies leaves me hesitating each time I’m about to plunk down money for an e-book. I wonder how long it’ll take until Amazon decides that its proprietary book format is a drag on sales?
(Footnote: I’m still not clear whether the fact that the Nook and Sony Reader both support ePub means that I can just move my books back and forth starting right now. But that’s the direction the whole industry needs to go, and it can’t happen soon enough.)
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One World, One Kindle | Technologizer Says:
October 22nd, 2009 at 4:43 am[…] but responds to the announcement of Barnes & Noble’s Nook, which will cost $259 and sounds like a more advancec device, at least in some […]
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Kindle Coming to PCs | Technologizer Says:
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:15 am[…] and pretty much a mandatory one for Amazon given that the books Barnes & Noble sells for its new Nook device can also be read on PCs and Macs. (No word on whether Amazon will release a Mac app; if it is, […]
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October 23rd, 2009 at 9:34 am[…] and pretty much a mandatory one for Amazon given that the books Barnes & Noble sells for its new Nook device can also be read on PCs and Macs. (No word on whether Amazon will release a Mac app; if it is, […]
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The E-Reader Explosion: A Cheat Sheet | Technologizer Says:
October 26th, 2009 at 12:14 am[…] week was the newsiest ever in the still-new world of e-book readers. We witnessed the unveiling of Barnes & Noble’s ambitious Nook. We got more details about Plastic Logic’s long-awaited device. We learned of an underdog […]
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October 27th, 2009 at 8:43 am[…] all: News Back before Barnes & Noble announced its Nook e-reader, some folks wondered whether the rumored B&N e-book device would simply be the one from Plastic […]
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Barnes & Noble’s Nook: Coming Slightly Less Soon | Technologizer Says:
November 13th, 2009 at 5:02 pm[…] all: News Want Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader? You’ll need to wait a bit longer than originally expected. B&N had been saying that the […]
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More Power, PDF for the Kindle | Technologizer Says:
November 24th, 2009 at 10:29 am[…] not be entirely coincidental that Amazon is making this announcement shortly before the arrival of Barnes & Noble’s Nook. That imposing Kindle competitor has more features overall than Amazon’s e-reader has had, […]
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March 24th, 2010 at 5:28 am[…] Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Kobo e-reader sports a 6″ monochrome E-Ink screen and can run for dayson a battery […]
October 20th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
It’s not just the Kindle’s format, it’s the way your ownership changes from day to day–now you own it, now you don’t, hey we forgot to tell you that there were limits on downloading and their policy of getting even bigger discounts from publishers so they can sell things cheaply. Have to go read the paper PC World on Windows 7, all my old machines are about to fall apart.
If you talk with them, might you ask them if they have any policies about libraries lending them?
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
My only comments is very simple. Books that you can buy in Amazon Kindle for 25$ are not for sale on B&N ebook format. If you want to buy it in other ebook online store, it will cost you 40$….????
so how can people think that nook with kill kindle????
Regards,