Introducing Nook, the most advanced ebook reader
barnesandnoble.com
barnesandnoble.com
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.
So what they should do is offer a $30/m for 30 books a month subscription. I'd be perfectly willing to pay that for access to their entire library, with the ability to at most read through 30 books per month. Another way to do it would be per page, so that you can sample many different books... e.g. 10000 pages for $30/m (assuming about 300 pages per book on average).
I would buy that in a heartbeat. I'd still buy physical books, but only those I want to own. Meanwhile, whoever's pulled this thing together gets a solid yearly income of $360 from me - much more than they get from all but the heaviest readers today.
(The other thing: will B&N allow it to happen?)
Sure, but it seems pretty useless for just plain regular reading.
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.
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.
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. :(
eInk is great to look at (and I prefer it to a lit display for reading), but it is still painfully slow.
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.
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..
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
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.
-1 on the ATT 3G but you can't have the best of everything.
Can anyone confirm this?
“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.
It doesn't seem to do WEP/WPA so you are a bit limited to connect everywhere
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
Call me immature, but isn't it rather silly?