Astranoir

The new Nook is really exciting. The screen is incredibly crisp, even without taking into account that it is a touch screen. Supposedly the battery can last up to 2 months. I fully charged it out of the box, as recommended, before setting it up, so I will see how long it lasts for me before dying.

The touch screen is surprisingly responsive. I find it to be more responsive and quick than the LCD touch screen on the Nook 1st edition. I haven’t used the Nook Color, so I’m not sure how it compares there.

The Nook Touch Reader feels a lot smaller and lighter to me than the Nook 1st Edition. It lacks the LCD touchscreen (which is fine by me since this e-ink screen is surprisingly dynamic), and the bezel is a different texture. On the Nook 1st Edition, the bezel is curved, shiny plastic where on the Nook Touch Reader, the bezel is flat matte rubbery material. The ports and chargers are the same micro USB.

So far, I’m really impressed with the new Nook Touch Reader. It is the closest thing I’ve found to the idea that captured my imagination when I first learned about e-readers and e-ink displays.

The screen is sharp and responsive, in both the visual and tactile sense. The physical buttons (4 side buttons and the “n” button at the bottom) have an improved response in comparison with the Nook 1st Edition. They are not as difficult to push, and the raised “n” button and ridges make the buttons easier to find by touch than the buttons on the Nook 1st Edition. The original Nook has raised dots to denote the buttons, and the “n” menu button is part of the touch screen, giving no tactile feedback.

Some features are currently missing; it doesn’t have any games like the chess and sudoku on the Nook 1st Edition. I’m not sure how many people played games on the old e-ink reader, however. Maybe with the increased popularity of apps on the Nook Color, a few may migrate to the Nook Touch Reader without the assistance of hacking. There are new social features. You can connect to your facebook, twitter, and/or google accounts. Connecting to your google account mostly seems to allow you to invite people to become “nook friends” so you can share books.

The home screen experience is interesting. The bottom of the screen seems to be devoted to advertising, which is kind of annoying. Edited 06/09/2011: When you have Nook Friends, apparently this shows their top recommendations. When you don’t (like me) it seems to be showing a couple of the Top 100 in the B&N store. What I do like is the top left portion of the screen shows what you’re currently reading, and your progress in pages. The top right portion of the screen shows your most recently acquired books. The top bar houses notification as normal: wi-fi signal, battery life, and time on the right. On the left, is a special notification icon that will list more specific notifications. I had one pop up when I connected to my google account, encouraging me to invite my google contacts to become nook friends.

I’ve only had this for a few hours, so I’ll continue using it over the coming week or two and post more updates of my impressions.

I have been interested in electronic books since the Bookman came out when I was a kid.  The idea of carrying around a library in my pocket is incredibly exciting.  I’ve been most interested in ebooks for their size and mobility.  I never ended up getting a Bookman due to cost, and availability of books (for the most part the only books I knew you could get were various versions of the Bible and dictionaries).

For a long time, I forgot about ereaders completely.  I got wrapped up in school, and did a lot less reading for pleasure.  As school-related reading began to subside, and as e-ink technology became more viable, my interest in ereaders flickered to life again.

While I was interested in e-ink ereaders, I had (and have) an unfounded skepticism with regard to Amazon’s Kindle.  I think part of it has to do with it feeling like such a closed platform, but otherwise, I’m not sure.  When I began looking at alternatives, I mostly came up with non-US products such as the iRiver Story (which did become available in the US early this year).

My roommate at the time, Jason, got a Sony reader.  He likes it because it has expandable memory, can read many different formats, and is relatively affordable.  His reader does not have 3G or wi-fi access, so he has to use his computer any time he wants to put new books on his reader.  For myself, I eventually settled on the Nook.  To me, it seemed like a good compromise between openness, and easy access to a large bookstore.  So far, I have been very pleased with my Nook.

Since I’ve gotten a Nook, I’ve struggled a lot more with whether to read print books or ebooks.   I still sometimes run into the problem I had with the Bookman where books I want just aren’t available as ebooks (especially if I want a book as soon as it’s released).  Because I’ve always preferred paperback books to hardcover, finding a paperback version of the book I want (new or used) is often cheaper than buying the ebook version (I know publishers have been complaining about ebooks being under-priced, but they must only be considering hardcover prices because I can find many new paperback novels for $6-8 msrp, so a $9.99 ebook is definitely more expensive).

Looking at the differences in how they can be ultilized as resources, on readers vs. on a computer, and between genres, Stephen at Stephen’s Lighthouse examines the difference between (print) books and ebooks in a different light.  I thought some of you guys might be interested in reading what he has to say, especially in reference to nonfiction and textbooks.  With every type of e-resource jumbled into one big category in many of today’s media stories, it’s nice to see a demarcation and examination of the growing world of electronic works.

There is a new update for the Nook today.  I checked it out, and decided to do a point-by-point write-up of the new features.

Read Ebooks for Free In-store

This is basically an extension of what was already available, from what I can tell.  Originally, when you went to a brick and mortar Barnes and Noble, you could access excerpts of any book.  Now, you can read any book while you’re in-store.  However, you are limited to one book per hour per day.  You could theoretically read hour segments of several books in one day and/or the same book an hour each every day.

[Side Effect of More Features/Better Accessibility]

Because there are new features in this update, and because they wanted to make the wi-fi and audio functions more accessible, there are now more buttons on the home screen.  Previously all the buttons fit without you having to scroll.  Now you have to scroll from side to side in order to see them all:

I don’t have a picture of the home screen before the update, but “games,” “wi-fi,” “audio,” and “web” didn’t have buttons on the home screen previously.

Games

With this update, games were added to the Nook.  So far, only Sudoku and Chess are available.  I took some time to play around with both a little bit.  They seem pretty straight forward and functional.  The main game is displayed on the e-ink screen, while a close-up, interactive view is on the color touch screen.

I don’t see myself playing the games very often, personally, but they do seem to fit well with the Nook.  I can see taking your Nook on the plane to read, and mixing things up by playing some sudoku on a long flight.

Wider Wi-Fi Access

Honestly, I have no idea what they mean by this.  Maybe there are now more Barnes and Noble hot spots?  I noticed that some reviewers speculated that this meant people could now access “open” wireless networks that require you to sign in through a web page.  As far as I can tell by testing it out, this is not the case.  In my experience, the new (beta) web browser is only accessible when you’re already connected to the wi-fi (it is not accessible through 3G).

Beta Surfing Online

This is the update that most excited me.  Even with an e-ink screen, it seems like the Nook could be a reasonably internet-capable device.  The browser is set up similarly to the games in that the e-ink display shows the main portion of what you’re viewing, while the color touch screen shows a smaller portion.

You can navigate/scroll a page using either the page turning buttons, or the touch screen.  You are able to add favorites, zoom, clear your browsing history, etc.  The main problem I ran into occurred when trying to enter text into fields.  Usually when you click on a field, the virtual keyboard pops up.

However, I found that sometimes it would instead jump to a dialog box asking me to choose an input method, and either giving me no options from which to choose and freezing, or giving me only the “android keyboard” option.  This problem occurred infrequently for me, however.

I found I was able to post to Twitter.  Staying logged into Twitter wasn’t very feasible, though, since it was very slow, and would try to refresh the e-ink screen whenever Twitter refreshed, which didn’t translate well to the e-ink screen.

I was not able to log into the admin portion of WordPress.  It merely navigated to a blank page.  Google Reader looked promising, but only loaded the top half of the page, and none of the links/articles were clickable/readable.  I did successfully log into Gmail.  There was limited functionality, but I was able to see my inbox, and open messages.  While unable to log into the admin portion of WordPress, I was able to load the front page of my blog.

Overall, it’s easy to see why the browser is in beta, but it seems workable.  In some ways it reminds me of the PS3 browser (especially because you have to scroll around a lot).

Preordering Books

Now, you can preorder books through the Nook store.  I doubt it’s a feature I’ll use much, but it seems like a nice addition.  There is no specific section in the store for preorders, so you need to search for the book you want.  Once I found a preorder-able book, it all looked pretty straight forward.

Enhanced Performance

Supposedly this update included faster load times when opening books, and faster page-turn times.  I was skeptical that I would be able to notice a difference, but it actually does look like everything navigates more quickly and smoothly.  This is a welcome update because sometimes the Nook would feel sluggish.  I know people who have tried both the Nook and Kindle bemoaned the slowness of the Nook in comparison.  I don’t know how it stacks up now comparatively, but it has definitely improved.

Wrap-up

This was a pretty hefty update (especially compared to the previous update that mostly seemed to change the home screen buttons).  I will have to see over time how often I use the new features such as the web browser and the games.  If nothing else, I can see myself using Wikipedia a lot to look up non-dictionary terms.  I will use the browser much more if it becomes compatible with Google Reader  In my mind, it seems like a good match.

Feel free to comment with any questions, or observations of your own.  I’d be happy to elaborate on anything, and to hear other people’s take on the new update.