The Kindle Killer Arrives 542
GeekZilla sends coverage from Wired's Gadget Lab on the Nook, Barnes & Noble's first e-book reader. "Sleek, stylish and runs the Android OS. What's not to like about Barnes and Noble's new e-book reader? Despite the odd name, the Nook looks like an eBook reader that would actually be a worthwhile investment. Best feature? The ability to loan e-books you have downloaded to other Nook owners. The reader, named the 'Nook,' looks a lot like Amazon's white plastic e-book, only instead of the chiclet-keyboard there is a color multi-touch screen, to be used as both a keyboard or to browse books, cover-flow style. The machine runs Google's Android OS, will have wireless capability from an unspecified carrier, and comes in at the same $260 as the now rather old-fashioned-looking Kindle." Here is the B&N Nook site, which is still not visible on their front page and has a few non-working links. (Nook.com isn't set up yet.) Their comparison page takes dead aim at the Kindle. Among the advantages in the Nook's column: Wi-Fi, expandable memory via microSD, MP3 player, and PDF compatibility. (But remember the cautionary note B&N struck six years back when they got out of the e-book business.)
Why can't I just use my iPhone? (Score:1, Interesting)
It provides a nice readable display, and more importantly doesn't make me open my wallet to buy a separate gadget.
Wait for the fine print (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A little early (Score:5, Interesting)
The same way the iPod killed the MPman, Rio, and other early-to-market MP3 players.
Now the iPod is like Kleenex or Hoover - the generic name for all players. Maybe the new Nook will become similarly popular and kill-off Kindle? I actually had one of my coworkers tell me that iPod is the only "true" player and I should stop using "ipod knockoffs" like Insignia. My attempt to tell him that iPod was not the first player, and actually arrived 3 years after the first was met with skepticism ("Don't be stupid. Apple was first.")
Re:Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. Even the "international" version of the Kindle is not available in Canada. WTF is up with that?
Book Selection (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, but how's the DRM? (Score:5, Interesting)
If their titles are bogged down with DRM I'm not buying it. Not as a political or philosophical statement; I've just burned my hand on that stove too many times. The music companies have figured it out (or at least have been clubbed into submission). Hopefully the book publishers will come to their senses as well.
Re:why white? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, no, you got it wrong. The "everything white" decor only existed in sci-fi shows, not in real life. See Buck Rogers.
1970s decor is the "fake woodgrain panel" look, as epitomized by the classic Atari game console. Even my old 70s television looks like it was made from fake wood. If you really wanted to make your iPod or Kindle have the 70s look, slap some paste-on woodgrain on the front. Like so: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XzjG65PlXj4/SluT0Q1RIiI/AAAAAAAAA-M/aZphER_TxdU/s400/woodipop.jpg [blogspot.com]
Okay, so I own an older Kindle, here's my POV... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can read PDF just fine - the conversion process can be done in multiple ways and costs me a few pennies down to nothing for the Kindle. So that's no biggie. The MP3 player? I have that on my multiple year old Kindle too - I have YET to EVER use it so that's no biggie. The expandable memory? I have that on mine too but it's SD and they killed it on the new version - stupid of them IMO. That said the new Kindle has more base memory and quite frankly if it's just books you're putting on there it will hold a metric shit-ton of books! The average paperback book I get is under a meg and I have gigs of storage on my device. So, while a nice touch this advantage isn't that big a deal to me.The color touch screen for nav I don't get, what's the advantage? If it uses more power then I don't want it - make the device like the Energizer Bunny and last a long long time and I'm happy. Things like refresh rate changing pages are a bigger deal to me than this gimmick, honestly refresh on my old unit is okay by me.
Having owned and used an eBook reader for a good long time now I can tell you that capacity, battery life, and coverage for the radio are big concerns for ME. My very biggest concern is availability of BOOKS at decent prices - more magazines would be nice. That's what I am buying the thing for and if it cannot give me a ton of access to books then it's worthless. Right now Amazon gives me all the books I can absorb, with rare exception, at somewhat decent discount rates. Lending is nice but 14 days isn't long enough for most - I've seen how slow some people are with reading! Give it a full screen that does color I might be more interested but not at the expense of most of the battery life.
Really for me this is a yawner unless it starts a price war on content. I know I'm locked in with Amazon DRM but I also know how to break it if I really wanted to - I've got the tools. If I had NO eReader then yeah sure this would be more interesting but their past with eBooks would give me pause . Anyway, nice to see more entries into this realm. Perhaps with more and more readers coming out someone will make the breaking of Amazon DRM a little bit easier and more automated? That would be helpful!!
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:4, Interesting)
Having said that, I'm still not ready to jump on the e-book bandwagon. The price is still a tad high, and there's too much uncertainty with the distribution models out there, like Amazon's deal with being able to arbitrarily revoke access to your own books and whatnot. Once they can give me a standard open e-book format that allows me to download books from anywhere, for pay or not, and keep them forever, and once they sell the readers at sub-$200 prices, I'll probably take the plunge.
Re:Unspecified carrier? It's AT&T. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:3, Interesting)
Please. Every touchscreen phone has capability for books. The difference here is that for reading you need something bigger. By the time any company "perfects" the tablet, nobody will care.
Also here you have android, so you can probably run the B&N software on your android phone (very likely). Also means you can probably run android apps and run android features, especially over wifi.
Thus, this thing has way more potential than competition's devices. It's not that someone else can't compete better than B&N which is well possible, but that B&N's device easily competes better than the kindle. Raising the bar, really.
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:5, Interesting)
I would have agreed with you until I got a Kindle as a present. I have started reading a lot more because of it. Its e-ink screen is much better than an iPhone (I don't want a flashlight shining directly into my eyes when I read at night). When I travel, its size is great (fits in my bag much more easily than a paperback).
Also, I find downloading e-books more convenient than acquiring physical copies of books.
Re:Will it be DRM inside? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The OS would only matter if the device is open (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:5, Interesting)
These will be instantly obsolete when someone (Apple?) perfects the tablet, single purpose devices won't be competitive.
This right here is one of my main problems with ebooks. Lets face it, I'm a total technogeek. But I have a real issue moving forward with ebooks. I fully understand that these concerns don't apply to everyone, but here are MYcurrent reasons for sticking with paper books, instead of spending money on an ebook reader, and the ebooks themselves.
- Battery - Common complaint, my books don't run out of battery
- Space - I can fit a paperback in my pocket.
- Durability - Both are ruined by water, but I can bang a paper book around pretty good and it's still readable. Even if I totally destroy a paper book, I'm only out the few dollars it cost me for that book [I buy most books used].
- Obsolesence - in 15, or 50 years I can give my books to my daughter or grandkids, and they'll be able to read them all or sell them to someone else to read [hopefully not :) ]. There's a good chance that the ebook I buy today won't be readable in 5 years let alone 50.
- DRM - as above, it's getting better if you can lend them, but when I'm done with my book I can give it to a friend, or sell it back to half-price books. Unless the ebook versions are *significantly* cheaper than the physical books, this is a problem for me. Every couple months I go to Half-Price Books, and pretty much buy their entire sci-fi/fantasy clearance section. I pay an average of about $3.00 for hardcover books and I still have the ability to give it away or sell it after I read it [though I prefer to keep my books]. Ebooks will need to compete with that pricing for me the consider it seriously.
- Physicality - This is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, it'd be great to have 1500 books in the space of one. On the other hand, I love the look of a wall full of books in my office. I love the different covers. I love the smell of the books.
- Disaster - If I were about to freeze to death, I could at least burn my books to keep warm. Can't do that with an ebook. :) Ok that's stretching a bit, and I'd probably spend so much time convincing myself to actually set a book on fire that I'd freeze first anyway.
I think the best thing that could happen, that would get me to buy one of the ebook readers, is if publishers started including the ebook along with the physical book. Obviously this would only be useful to the person who first purchased the book, but still allowing them to give/sell the physical book. And when I do buy a new book, I'd even be willing to pay an extra $1 or so to get the ebook to go along with it.
With all that said, this 'Nook reader looks very cool. If I found something like this on sale at a significant discount, I'd really consider getting one, even if I just used it to read the huge number of free books available via B&N and other sources. But at the current new price, I'd just as soon buy a bunch of paper books.
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:2, Interesting)
Before I start just a disclaimer: I am a person who loves reading to the degree that I have on several occasions missed work and social engagements when I got 'stuck' in a book and could not bring myself to put it down until it was finished.
As much as the price is pretty prohibitive, with the e-ink display and what looks like a nice, unobtrusive interface as well as expandable memory, this is the first e-book reader I've seen that I'd actually consider owning. While e-books have been available for a long time, I've never actually been able to finish reading one. Reading for long periods off any traditional type of screen is a pain in the freckle for a start. To me, screens are generally only good for short articles (up to 10 pages).
The peculiar interaction one has with a book as one turns the pages is missing as well. I guess the main thing is that a physical book has a very finite space. It only has in it what was printed in it or margin notes etc. It has no internet, advanced search or multi-tasking capabilities. It has a world of it's own. To interact with another book-world you have to put it down and pick up another one. On electronic devices it is so easy to jump from one thing to another and scrape for gems, missing a lot on the way. In a book you have to mine for them.
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:4, Interesting)
There are going to be amazing tablet PCs coming soon. With a Pixel Qi display [youtube.com] capacitive touch screen, the killer app will be 10" ebook readers that are clearer and easier to read than E-Ink in sunlight, but which do decent color video indoors. I just sent my wish list to a friend I have in marketing at Dell:
Wifi, bluetooth, a couple USB ports
Yeah... I really want one.
Re:i'm not paying $250 to buy books (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree.. this one is pretty cool. Certainly much closer than the Kindle. A couple of things:
* Book Price -- if B&N follow the Amazon pattern, they'll release ebooks at the same time as hardcovers, for less cash. That's a good thing, for certain, though if you're one of those who waits for the paperback, the price might be a bit more. Not that paperbacks are all that cheap these days, compared to the $9.95 "standard" price for many ebooks.
* The e-ink is a must right now for readers. Anything that qualifies as "book" has to be readable on the beach, or it's a no-go. These e-ink systems get better in bright light, worse in the dark... they behave very much like, well, ink on paper. There's no power used to keep the image up, just to change pages... thus, 10-days of reading.
* Also, changing to higher power displays, adding games capability... no! Anyone asking for that stuff ought to look into these things called computers. They already have this stuff. You can already read ebooks on them. Making an ebook reader do this stuff will give you both a bad ebook and a bad computer.
* The ability to lend it makes for a much better "book" model, naturally without the nasty aspect of having to get that book back from the lendee. Libraries ought to be able to tap into this mechanism, too.
* SD expansion and direct PDF support -- kudos there! That's a major issue with the Kindle. What's the point of an eBook reader that can't store all your books. Sure, whatever's left out of the built-in 2GB is sufficient for 1500 novels, but once you talk about illustrations (eg, PDFs, even if converted to monochrome or halftone for space savings), you're getting big. I have over 2GB of PDF datasheets for the current hardware project I'm doing at work... it would be fairly cool to have these all on-tap on a device like this (also makes it tax deductible... hmmm...)
Two big problems still, which really are the same problem. The book model fails if I can't resell the book somehow, if I can't read it on a different ebook reader (though at introduction, B&N is supporting "alternate reader" on way more non-ebook devices than Amazon, and you have to believe Android is going to be on the list soon, given they've already written that code for the Nook already).
The ePub format is a good move.. XML based, world standard, all that jazz. But ePub still supports the option of a DRM, but doesn't specify a DRM. I'm sure they're using some DRM, perhaps a proprietary one for the Nook. My guess is that the books you buy are downloaded keyed to your Nook, and will be an issue to read anywhere else. I would love to be wrong about this. Hopefully, there's more information on just what they're doing here.
I really do want to see a "book" model that really behaves like a book. That's a problem on computer systems... too easy to make it copy, which is not what I'm after... I just don't want to give up the rights normally associated with real books. They could certainly facilitate reselling of ebooks online, just like Amazon does today with used books... that would vanish if B&N ever got out of the business, or a different standard prevailed in some years.
Obviously, this reader will be useful at least for ePub, non-DRMed, for other sources if B&N fails in this can cancels their services... I guess Kindle does that, too, although Amazon's ebooks are proprietary format, and you need Amazon involved to get PDFs on a Kindle.