$249 Android tablet from Barnes & Noble | Hacker News Reader

$249 Android tablet from Barnes & Noble

engadget.com

42 pointstomeast44 comments

Am I the only one who remembers that the entire point of an e-reader is e-ink? Seems like the reader market is merging into the tablet market.

The whole reason I'm even interested in an e-reader is because of the opportunity to give my eyes a break. I don't care about color if it means I'm still staring at a computer screen all day. But then again, maybe we aren't the target market...?

hell, I'd buy an e-ink display for my laptop. I don't care about color, but it's a portable device... it'd be nice to be able to use it outside (or in the passenger seat of a car on a sunny day)

Toshiba had (has?) some laptops with transflective displays.

Well... The T-1000 was transreflective. And the Data General One...

Totally agree. I would love to have a laptop that has an e-ink screen (color or not); as long as the refresh rate was normal. Backlit displays cause too much eyestrain.

Every chance I get I browse the web on my Kindle - even though the browser sucks + refresh rate sucks; at least my eyes are comfortable. I'm already staring at a laptop coding ~18 hours a day.

You can buy a Pixel Qi 10" display and retrofit it into a netbook type laptop. This is a follow-on of the OLPC screen.

http://www.pixelqi.com/products

$275 + some bravery http://www.pixelqi.com/where_to_buy => http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKPQ...

Please note: These screens replace those found in the Samsung N130 & Lenovo S10-2. Although they do work in other models, we can only guarantee compatibility on those 2 specific netbooks. We are testing other models, and will update the list as needed.

that looks pretty great... except the lenovo S10-2 has a keyboard that is just as unusable as everything else in it's size class. It's sad, really, 'cause other than that it looks like a really solid netbook. (the only thing I've been able to type on that comes close to that size is the sony vaio P-series, which seems to be built around the keyboard, though even that, though usable, was not even close to the keyboard on a 12" ThinkPad X series.)

I had a last-generation OLPC, and oh man, even if they haven't improved the screen at all it was still better than any other laptop screen I have seen. Of course, the keyboard on the OLPC takes 'unusable' to a whole 'nother level.

In my anecdotal experience, decreasing screen size has a significant impact on eye strain. I get the most train when I'm using the TV as a screen and the least on the iPhone. Well actually, the nook still has the least but the iPhone is negligible. Makes a fair amount of sense if the cause is due to excess light.

Actually the point of an e-reader is the e-book, not the e-ink. E-ink is just a way to show text in a way that drains little battery and gives little eye strain. It has, however, a couple very significant drawbacks. And it seems more expensive to manufacture than a very good LCD.

What drawbacks are you thinking of? Lack of colour and refresh time?

Mostly yes. And also the difficulties of attaching a touchscreen to the e-paper display (there must be a reason why only Sony does it).

Being unable to read in low-light conditions also bothers me sometimes. I keep Stanza installed on my iPod for that.

You are of course right. An e-ink display is the only reason I would purchase such a device, however. I've used LCDs for reading and I find them difficult to read on for more than an hour or so straight.

I disagree, if I wanted to read e-books on an LCD why wouldn't I just use my laptop or computer monitor?

The answer for me is because they aren't enjoyable to read on, too much eye strain. E-ink solves this.

A laptop has a clamshell design that does not support the same "operating modes" a book does. A tablet, maybe.

You won't cover all use cases - static text and video/animation - with a single design (PixelQi has a good compromise for the screen)

If my experience serves as a guide, the source of eye strain is the brightness. If you lower the LCD brightness to be more or less the same as what would be reflected from ambient conditions, you will see a marked improvement.

Exactly. I don't see the immediate need for color ebook reader -- when was the last time I read a color book?

I see the Kindle and iPad as complements, not competitors, and I don't think straddling the middle will work.

The touchscreen LCD offers a good enough experience with books, specially with ease and speed of zoom (something e-paper is nasty at) and an order of magnitude better experience with web browsing while at a price that's half the iPad. Does it have 3G to go along with the wifi? Does it allow capacity expansion through an SD card?

Why is the speed of zooming text an issue? How much zooming do you do that you can't wait for half second>

Any zoom that's interactive. It divides my attention between reading the book and operating it.

I can see color being nice for text books or any book with diagrams. However, not at the expense of the wonderful eye pleasing display that is e-ink. Which, as I stated before, is to my mind, the only reason for purchasing such a device. Otherwise why not just buy a netbook?

Only showing non-working mockups and a "look but don't touch" demo unit at the press event for a device that's supposed to ship on Nov 19th makes me highly suspicious.

For this thing to succeed it needs a killer web browser, and I suspect it doesn't have one.

Wouldn't it get that through the android OS?

It will get 'a web browser', but the experience will depend on the hardware and how it's been adapted to the larger screen.

E.g

- Is it just the stock Android browser scaled up?

- Does it support tabs, how many?

- HTML5 video?

- How is the scrolling / zooming performance?

- How much memory does it contain? How likely are background pages to be flushed?

- What's the clock speed? How fast do pages load? What's the JS performance like?

I guess you're an iOS user.

Froyo has an excellent browser. Experience is very much like with any desktop one. It has windows instead of tabs. I don't think it will support HTML5 video, but it has Flash which works flawlessly (and no unreasonably high impact on battery life). That said, it all depends on decent CPU like Snapdragon, which I don't think nook will get.

BTW, nook's own browser is very sucky right now.

it has Flash which works flawlessly

According to the Q&A in the article, Nook Color does not support Flash.

if it does have Android's stock browser, it may not be running Froyo/2.2 (which is needed for Flash support)

It has to have a pretty modern WebKit build.

Compare to Windows Phone 7's IE7/8 hybrid...

Even TVs these days have better browsers than Windows Phone 7. It's not even funny.

Even the B&W Nooks have a WebKit-based browser that works fairly well (renders Facebook usably), although the UI is a bit clunky. JavaScript is a bit slow, though, so I hope that the hardware is beefier.

And it can't log in to HN (not, at least, through the built-in non-OpenID authentication)

I presume that it is merely a matter of time before this device is rooted and turned into a basic Android tablet, complete with Flash, Marketplace access, etc.

I suspect, however, that it is too underpowered to support Flash very well.

The Archos 101 has comparable price, a 10" display, Android Market and looks very very good indeed.

E Ink Holdings (and competitors) have been demoing colour E Ink screens for a while. This doesn't use that but I can't wait to see one that does.

It frustrates me when people release devices like this. It's not a good e-reader because it hurts your eyes if you read on it for too long, and it's a half-baked tablet. Whats the point? You can't compete with the iPad with equipment like this, so why not stick to making good quality e-readers?

I want to ask: do you guys in U.S. really do have that much WiFi coverage so you don't need a 3G? Here in Europe I can't imagine to buy such a thing without 3G... or do you do WiFi tethering through your phone or carry a WiFi hotspot device with you?

I pay for 3g on my smartphone in the US and it's pretty much wasted. I have wifi at home, work, and school, and even inside and outside most of the downtown places (bars, restaurants) I frequent. I literally only use 3g when I'm in my car (which isn't very often) and when I want to listen to Pandora or Grooveshark (also not often given my 30 GB music collection on the phone) or if I want GPS directions (my only real use of 3g, and that's at the most twice a month).

Download the 1 or 2 books you need for the day and viola, no connection needed.

But I would also like to use it for web/email. If I want tablet only for reading, then I can buy Kindle instead.

I'm personally disappointed that it's more of a "Nook with color" than it is an Android tablet.

Wish there was more information about "Nook Developer" as it's hard to tell how much work an Android app needs to run on this.

As far as I know, not much.

Rooting the Nook is straightforward (at least the previous version of the original one) and all goes well from there.

AFAIK, B&N doesn't support developers and, last time I checked, appeared to have no plans to do so.

Now to see if they leave allow a full Android environment or lock it down.

No Android Market (will have it's own store in the future). No Adobe Flash either.

Given that Ted Patrick (http://ted.onflash.org/) just left Adobe for Barnes & Noble, there is a reasonable chance that it may get Flash at some point.

Or else he's going to work on a Nook version of Adobe's software for publishing glossy magazines on the iPad.

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