Harry McCracken reviews Barnes & Noble’s Nook.
The Nook has one feature that really had me excited: the ability to share books. So when I read this statement, I was disappointed:
“Even the much-hyped lending feature has a major gotcha: You can lend a book once. Period.”
That’s a shame. The one place that B&N really could have blown Amazon out of the water, they’ve squandered their chance. Kindle users have been asking for this feature since the device’s release two years ago. I have to think that Amazon is hard at work in the lab designing a book sharing mechanism for Kindle.
That said, the Nook’s build quality and format openness are both attractive features that should give Amazon some stiff competition. And like McCracken mentions in the review, B&N has the massive brick-and-mortar store backing that Amazon lacks to tout their product to a wider market.
The one big downside I’ve seen with all e-readers (though I’ve not used one personally, besides an old Sony Reader) is the lack of touchscreen. The Nook and Sony devices both have touch, but not substantially useful touch. On the Nook only the bottom mini-color screen has touch functionality, and the Sony device has a full touchscreen, but must be used with a stylus. At this point I feel like the iPhone Kindle app is still the best e-reading experience for me. And it’s free, once you have the phone.
One cool feature Nook that Amazon and Sony truly can’t compete with:
“When you take the e-reader into a B&N branch, it notices you’re there, connects you to the store’s hotspot for free, and greets you–and may offer you fringe benefits such as free content or a complimentary cookie at the store’s coffee counter. Barnes & Noble also plans to let Nook owners hanging out at the company’s stores peruse books in their entirety, not just the brief samples that can otherwise be downloaded for free. (This feature isn’t quite ready yet, so I wasn’t able to test it.)”
