6 ms·

Introducing Nook, the most advanced ebook reader

41 points by scapegraced 17y ago

aditya 17y ago
Wow. Good job BN. The thing looks well designed and fairly solid. -1 on the ATT 3G but you can't have the best of everything.
gbookman 17y ago
The touchscreen on the bottom and the book sharing are huge advantages. This is the first eBook reader that I actually would consider buying because of those two things. I'm not sure why no one's done free book sharing. It's the ultimate way to encourage people to tell their friends about the product. What I'm curious about is the book buying. Based on the video, you have to use that tiny screen at the bottom to buy books. Hope I'm wrong..
- cppppp 17y ago
  >I'm not sure why no one's done free book sharing. Because sharing things you have bought is the same as terrorism or murdering kittens - the ad at the beginning of the DVD told me that Remember before reading Goldilocks and the three bears to your kid from your ebook you need to buy an extra client access license and a public performance license
stcredzero 17y ago
The responsive color screen has a lot of potential. If one could have a "Cover Flow" style browsing mode, this would make the Nook a 10X better device for browsing reference material and other kinds of not-purely-linear reading. Others on HN have lamented the lack of "flippability" in other e-readers. This could be used to provide exactly that! (The other thing: will B&N allow it to happen?)
- technomancy 17y ago
  > this would make the Nook a 10X better device for browsing reference material and other kinds of not-purely-linear reading. Sure, but it seems pretty useless for just plain regular reading.
  - jfager 17y ago
    Right, but so's the keyboard on the Kindle, which takes up about the same amount of space.
- mattmcknight 17y ago
  Do you mean having the nearby pages in your current book show at the bottom of the screen? That would be nice, since e-ink is a bit slow to refresh. I don't see much in point in the way it's pictured on the site though and in the video, shopping for books by flipping through book covers is highly inefficient! Overall, I lament the lack of a keyboard. Searching for books using the Kindle is probably better.
  - swombat 17y ago
    That's silly... it would use up lots of battery, defeating half the point of eInk.
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      When I'm using the thing for reference, having only 1/10th or even 1/20th of the battery power is just fine! When I'm at my desk programming, I can probably have the thing plugged in. Even if I'm being a musician and using it as a "starter" or a fake book, I can probably have it plugged in. In that context, 4 hours of battery is usually plenty, anyhow. Also, in this "reference" mode, the system could turn off the 2nd display until it's actually touched. The way this flip thing would work, is that you would fade from the "cover-flow" animation to a larger, scrollable image of the text. Flicking to the side would fade you back into the cover-flow animation. It would be better if the whole display were used, but the smaller horizontal slice of a page would work too.
terpua 17y ago
According to http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/nook-official/ http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/nook-official/, wifi only works in B&N stores. If that is the case, it can't compete with Kindle 2 internationally. Can anyone confirm this?
- lanaer 17y ago
  That seems to contradict the wording on B&N. “Browse eBooks, magazines and newspapers on AT&T's 3G Wireless Network or on Wi-Fi. And every Barnes & Noble has free Wi-Fi, so you can connect at lightning fast speeds.” Sounds like B&N is just marketing their Wi-Fi hotspots as a convenience, but it doesn’t need to be their hotspots; any Wi-Fi connection should do.
  - cppppp 17y ago
    Yes they even sell this as an advantage over the Kindle - you can connect anywhere in the world that has wifi. It doesn't seem to do WEP/WPA so you are a bit limited to connect everywhere
    - sh1mmer 17y ago
      If it's built on Android it would be surprising if it doesn't handle WEP/WPA
- krzyk 17y ago
  Well, wifi internationally in Kindle works only in very few countries.
cppppp 17y ago
I assume those of us living in the ice covered wasteland to the North will never get this.
- Gibbon 17y ago
  I don't see a lot of Barnes and Nobles in my neighbourhood.. so I'm guessing that would be a "yes".
  - cppppp 17y ago
    True - if only the internet was international.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Definitely a great entrant into the market, and I'm hopeful that Amazon will step it up in response. Two things in particular that I'd like to see from Amazon are integrated access to public domain works (perhaps via a deal with Gutenberg or Google), and the ability to lend books to a friend. What's nice is that neither of these would require anything other than a free over-the-air update.
technomancy 17y ago
While they've got a really great opportunity to beat Amazon by being more open with their content, something tells me they're going to screw it up royally with DRM.
- andreyf 17y ago
  Both Amazon and B&N are distributors. That means publishers are their customers too, and they're a hell of a lot more fickle about DRM/no-DRM than those who buy books... hence, B&N has a lot of publishers to lose by including weaker DRM than the Kindle.
martingordon 17y ago
I bought a refurb Kindle 2 29 days ago and am a click away from returning it and pre-ordering a Nook. I haven't bought any books on the Kindle yet (I'm working through a copy of Atlas Shrugged I downloaded, a book I own and isn't available in Kindle format), but it struck me that if I had, those books would be completely useless on the new reader and not only that, I can't sell them or give them away. The publishers are going to go through the same process the music industry went through for 7-10 years and hopefully we'll eventually have DRM free books. The difference between books and music is that while someone might want to listen to a particular song out of their thousand song library at any given time, it's much more unlikely that someone would like that kind of random access to their books. I just hope DRM will only be an annoyance and won't sabotage eBook reader adoption.
- aw3c2 17y ago
  To me that random access is the killer feature itself. What other benefit would I have from using an ebook reader if not to carry around my whole library instead of just the book I am currently mainly reading.
  - martingordon 17y ago
    * Size * Ease of transition between books (you can carry 2-3 books so you won't ever be without a book). * Search
- mattmcknight 17y ago
  The purported "loan to a friend" feature of the Nook does sound a bit Zune-like. It's unlikely that there will be a DRM free approach, but I've seen notably less hacking on the Amazon format than on AAC. Perhaps since the decryption doesn't happen on a general purpose computer, it's harder to crack. Or maybe crackers don't read books?
  - inklesspen 17y ago
    The Kindle DRM is trivially broken. Kindle ebooks are basically just Mobipocket ebooks.
smakz 17y ago
To me this whole Nook thing feels like a "shock and awe" campaign from B&N to take steam away from the Kindle and to their credit it seems to be working. Personally, I'm skeptical they will be able to pull it off. They have a feature list a mile long (touch screen, eink display, wireless, wifi, etc) and I'd be shocked if things worked even 1/3 as well as they are advertising in their press releases, but I will reserve judgment for when it is finally released in November.
- turtle4 17y ago
  Yeah, I'm slightly skeptical as well, but at the same time excited, because a little competition never hurt the consumer.
makmanalp 17y ago
compared to the kindle, pros: + native PDF support (how dumb are you, amazon?) + micro SD slot + ebook lending (probably DRM'd) + wifi + based on android cons: - amazon likely has a larger selection of books than BN. - no browser -> no free wikipedia, gmail. maybe hacking one on works? - no keyboard. on screen one maybe? This makes sense from the initial design perspective though, people don't often use keyboards while reading. - 10 days vs 14 days of power, which is not that big an issue. I think the two separate screens idea is brilliant. I wonder if they'll release the source code for the software like amazon did. Though I still applaud the kindle for good effort, the Kindle 2 / DX should have been as good as this. This looks like a much more well thought out and complete product. They even have different covers and rechargeable batteries for it. Damnit, I was about to get the kindle with the newer reduced price (with international wireless) but now I have to wait and decide. If there is a browser and is usable, I'd go for it without thinking further.
- sh1mmer 17y ago
  According to the comparison page on BN (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/) BN have a larger selection of ebooks 1m+ titles and more free ebooks 500k+ than Amazon. Main downside for me is I want something like the DX to read technical books on as well. BN aren't even suggesting they'll compete there and I haven't heard any rumours of Amazon reving the DX yet. :(
  - turtle4 17y ago
    What is DX? Just a larger screen than standard Kindle?
    - lliiffee 17y ago
      Also it has hardware pdf support.
ez77 17y ago
Do you know whether plain text and html files are supported? I'm thinking Project Gutenberg...
- hiroaki 17y ago
  Afaict, Nook has access to Google Books, which should have a good number of public domain ebooks including the ones on Project Gutenberg.
  - turtle4 17y ago
    Source?
roundsquare 17y ago
nook retains important reading rituals like bookmarking, making notes, and highlighting passages. Bookmarkings seems easy enough. Even highlighting I can imagine an approach. But note taking? How are they planning to do this? Notes in books are usually in the margins and have a line drawn to where the person is taking notes. I'm really curious to see how this works. Edit: Spelling
- mapleoin 17y ago
  with sony's prs600 which seems similar you have a stylus with which you can draw on top of the text.
jsz0 17y ago
The color screen on the bottom looks ridiculous to me. What's its purpose? Only to show other e-books covers? It feels like they just wanted to make it look different than the Kindle.
- kristiandupont 17y ago
  I have a Sony eBook reader and I have to say that I would welcome a display that updates rapidly for everything else than the actual reading, i.e. menu navigation, searching, preview of the next page etc. eInk is great to look at (and I prefer it to a lit display for reading), but it is still painfully slow.
- turtle4 17y ago
  It is a touch screen. It is used for user interaction. You can swipe it to scroll through your books, but I'm sure it can be/is used for other things. Display keyboard to enter search terms, etc. Apple detailed the many benefits of this when people complained about the iphone not having actual keys. It makes the device more flexible. Want to use the device in English and Korean? No need for a different device, just display the different keyboard. My only negative thought about it is that the color screen has got to be a bigger eater of battery than if they had gone all hardware, ala kindle, but I don't know if it is really an issue or not.
jolie 17y ago
Nooke eReader... Nookie Reader... Call me immature, but isn't it rather silly?

41 points by scapegraced 17y ago

Wow. Good job BN. The thing looks well designed and fairly solid. -1 on the ATT 3G but you can't have the best of everything.

gbookman 17y ago

The touchscreen on the bottom and the book sharing are huge advantages. This is the first eBook reader that I actually would consider buying because of those two things. I'm not sure why no one's done free book sharing. It's the ultimate way to encourage people to tell their friends about the product. What I'm curious about is the book buying. Based on the video, you have to use that tiny screen at the bottom to buy books. Hope I'm wrong..

cppppp 17y ago
>I'm not sure why no one's done free book sharing. Because sharing things you have bought is the same as terrorism or murdering kittens - the ad at the beginning of the DVD told me that Remember before reading Goldilocks and the three bears to your kid from your ebook you need to buy an extra client access license and a public performance license

stcredzero 17y ago

The responsive color screen has a lot of potential. If one could have a "Cover Flow" style browsing mode, this would make the Nook a 10X better device for browsing reference material and other kinds of not-purely-linear reading. Others on HN have lamented the lack of "flippability" in other e-readers. This could be used to provide exactly that! (The other thing: will B&N allow it to happen?)

technomancy 17y ago
> this would make the Nook a 10X better device for browsing reference material and other kinds of not-purely-linear reading. Sure, but it seems pretty useless for just plain regular reading.
- jfager 17y ago
  Right, but so's the keyboard on the Kindle, which takes up about the same amount of space.
mattmcknight 17y ago
Do you mean having the nearby pages in your current book show at the bottom of the screen? That would be nice, since e-ink is a bit slow to refresh. I don't see much in point in the way it's pictured on the site though and in the video, shopping for books by flipping through book covers is highly inefficient! Overall, I lament the lack of a keyboard. Searching for books using the Kindle is probably better.
- swombat 17y ago
  That's silly... it would use up lots of battery, defeating half the point of eInk.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    When I'm using the thing for reference, having only 1/10th or even 1/20th of the battery power is just fine! When I'm at my desk programming, I can probably have the thing plugged in. Even if I'm being a musician and using it as a "starter" or a fake book, I can probably have it plugged in. In that context, 4 hours of battery is usually plenty, anyhow. Also, in this "reference" mode, the system could turn off the 2nd display until it's actually touched. The way this flip thing would work, is that you would fade from the "cover-flow" animation to a larger, scrollable image of the text. Flicking to the side would fade you back into the cover-flow animation. It would be better if the whole display were used, but the smaller horizontal slice of a page would work too.

terpua 17y ago

According to http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/nook-official/ http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/nook-official/, wifi only works in B&N stores. If that is the case, it can't compete with Kindle 2 internationally. Can anyone confirm this?

lanaer 17y ago
That seems to contradict the wording on B&N. “Browse eBooks, magazines and newspapers on AT&T's 3G Wireless Network or on Wi-Fi. And every Barnes & Noble has free Wi-Fi, so you can connect at lightning fast speeds.” Sounds like B&N is just marketing their Wi-Fi hotspots as a convenience, but it doesn’t need to be their hotspots; any Wi-Fi connection should do.
- cppppp 17y ago
  Yes they even sell this as an advantage over the Kindle - you can connect anywhere in the world that has wifi. It doesn't seem to do WEP/WPA so you are a bit limited to connect everywhere
  - sh1mmer 17y ago
    If it's built on Android it would be surprising if it doesn't handle WEP/WPA
krzyk 17y ago
Well, wifi internationally in Kindle works only in very few countries.

cppppp 17y ago

I assume those of us living in the ice covered wasteland to the North will never get this.

Gibbon 17y ago
I don't see a lot of Barnes and Nobles in my neighbourhood.. so I'm guessing that would be a "yes".
- cppppp 17y ago
  True - if only the internet was international.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

Definitely a great entrant into the market, and I'm hopeful that Amazon will step it up in response. Two things in particular that I'd like to see from Amazon are integrated access to public domain works (perhaps via a deal with Gutenberg or Google), and the ability to lend books to a friend. What's nice is that neither of these would require anything other than a free over-the-air update.

technomancy 17y ago

While they've got a really great opportunity to beat Amazon by being more open with their content, something tells me they're going to screw it up royally with DRM.

andreyf 17y ago
Both Amazon and B&N are distributors. That means publishers are their customers too, and they're a hell of a lot more fickle about DRM/no-DRM than those who buy books... hence, B&N has a lot of publishers to lose by including weaker DRM than the Kindle.

martingordon 17y ago

I bought a refurb Kindle 2 29 days ago and am a click away from returning it and pre-ordering a Nook. I haven't bought any books on the Kindle yet (I'm working through a copy of Atlas Shrugged I downloaded, a book I own and isn't available in Kindle format), but it struck me that if I had, those books would be completely useless on the new reader and not only that, I can't sell them or give them away. The publishers are going to go through the same process the music industry went through for 7-10 years and hopefully we'll eventually have DRM free books. The difference between books and music is that while someone might want to listen to a particular song out of their thousand song library at any given time, it's much more unlikely that someone would like that kind of random access to their books. I just hope DRM will only be an annoyance and won't sabotage eBook reader adoption.

aw3c2 17y ago
To me that random access is the killer feature itself. What other benefit would I have from using an ebook reader if not to carry around my whole library instead of just the book I am currently mainly reading.
- martingordon 17y ago
  * Size * Ease of transition between books (you can carry 2-3 books so you won't ever be without a book). * Search
mattmcknight 17y ago
The purported "loan to a friend" feature of the Nook does sound a bit Zune-like. It's unlikely that there will be a DRM free approach, but I've seen notably less hacking on the Amazon format than on AAC. Perhaps since the decryption doesn't happen on a general purpose computer, it's harder to crack. Or maybe crackers don't read books?
- inklesspen 17y ago
  The Kindle DRM is trivially broken. Kindle ebooks are basically just Mobipocket ebooks.

smakz 17y ago

To me this whole Nook thing feels like a "shock and awe" campaign from B&N to take steam away from the Kindle and to their credit it seems to be working. Personally, I'm skeptical they will be able to pull it off. They have a feature list a mile long (touch screen, eink display, wireless, wifi, etc) and I'd be shocked if things worked even 1/3 as well as they are advertising in their press releases, but I will reserve judgment for when it is finally released in November.

turtle4 17y ago
Yeah, I'm slightly skeptical as well, but at the same time excited, because a little competition never hurt the consumer.

makmanalp 17y ago

compared to the kindle, pros: + native PDF support (how dumb are you, amazon?) + micro SD slot + ebook lending (probably DRM'd) + wifi + based on android cons: - amazon likely has a larger selection of books than BN. - no browser -> no free wikipedia, gmail. maybe hacking one on works? - no keyboard. on screen one maybe? This makes sense from the initial design perspective though, people don't often use keyboards while reading. - 10 days vs 14 days of power, which is not that big an issue. I think the two separate screens idea is brilliant. I wonder if they'll release the source code for the software like amazon did. Though I still applaud the kindle for good effort, the Kindle 2 / DX should have been as good as this. This looks like a much more well thought out and complete product. They even have different covers and rechargeable batteries for it. Damnit, I was about to get the kindle with the newer reduced price (with international wireless) but now I have to wait and decide. If there is a browser and is usable, I'd go for it without thinking further.

sh1mmer 17y ago
According to the comparison page on BN (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/) BN have a larger selection of ebooks 1m+ titles and more free ebooks 500k+ than Amazon. Main downside for me is I want something like the DX to read technical books on as well. BN aren't even suggesting they'll compete there and I haven't heard any rumours of Amazon reving the DX yet. :(
- turtle4 17y ago
  What is DX? Just a larger screen than standard Kindle?
  - lliiffee 17y ago
    Also it has hardware pdf support.

ez77 17y ago

Do you know whether plain text and html files are supported? I'm thinking Project Gutenberg...

hiroaki 17y ago
Afaict, Nook has access to Google Books, which should have a good number of public domain ebooks including the ones on Project Gutenberg.
- turtle4 17y ago
  Source?

roundsquare 17y ago

nook retains important reading rituals like bookmarking, making notes, and highlighting passages. Bookmarkings seems easy enough. Even highlighting I can imagine an approach. But note taking? How are they planning to do this? Notes in books are usually in the margins and have a line drawn to where the person is taking notes. I'm really curious to see how this works. Edit: Spelling

mapleoin 17y ago
with sony's prs600 which seems similar you have a stylus with which you can draw on top of the text.

jsz0 17y ago

The color screen on the bottom looks ridiculous to me. What's its purpose? Only to show other e-books covers? It feels like they just wanted to make it look different than the Kindle.

kristiandupont 17y ago
I have a Sony eBook reader and I have to say that I would welcome a display that updates rapidly for everything else than the actual reading, i.e. menu navigation, searching, preview of the next page etc. eInk is great to look at (and I prefer it to a lit display for reading), but it is still painfully slow.
turtle4 17y ago
It is a touch screen. It is used for user interaction. You can swipe it to scroll through your books, but I'm sure it can be/is used for other things. Display keyboard to enter search terms, etc. Apple detailed the many benefits of this when people complained about the iphone not having actual keys. It makes the device more flexible. Want to use the device in English and Korean? No need for a different device, just display the different keyboard. My only negative thought about it is that the color screen has got to be a bigger eater of battery than if they had gone all hardware, ala kindle, but I don't know if it is really an issue or not.

jolie 17y ago

Nooke eReader... Nookie Reader... Call me immature, but isn't it rather silly?