Jolene and I popped over to our local Barnes and Noble to see a demo nook the other night…
Worth a long look, but I still didn’t feel the urge to pull out a credit card.
Maybe it’s because they weren’t in stock. Maybe it’s because we had to get a manager to bring a demo model out from the back to show us one… I mean really? They have a pretty big kiosk with those “pull this plug and the alarm goes off” thing going on… you have to keep them locked up? In University Village? Makes me wonder if they have a glass case around them in New York… but anyway…
After a brief wait, the manager returned with one and instantly three other people started circling the kiosk so they went to get another model. Tells me there’s a lot of interest around the thing…
Hardware wise, it’s nice. Really nice. The e-Ink screen is still capable of forcing me to drop my jaw. That’s always been amazing to me. Jolene’s take on it was a) there’s no color, b) it’s not a touchscreen?, c) it looks OK. And that sums up what I’ve heard most people say about eBook readers… the e-Ink screen is the same in all models right now; companies are simply packaging the screen in different ways… to that end, the nook does a nice job of it: the lower screen is a captive touchscreen and it’s pretty easy to type on, when you have to. It’s also color, which is nice when browsing book covers. But the bottom line is that people are so used to devices like the iPhone that they want the whole thing to be touchable. It’s not a new vibe either – I recall saying the same thing with a RIM 957: had this [at the time] monster screen with large icons, but I could tap them like I could a [then new] Palm-size PC or Palm… I had to use the rolling wheel for navigation. Wasn’t bad but it wasn’t intuitive either.
Software wise, it’s been said already: it’s a little quirky and it’s slow. The quirky is just getting used to the hardware thing above: if you can only touch 1/5th of the device, how to control the rest of the device from that one window. It’s not bad, but it’s a little weird at first. The slowness is more… well, you have to be very deliberate with the device. If you press a button, and you know you pressed it, and it’s not responding, you just have to wait for it. Again, like the early days of PDA’s, it’s like writing with Graffiti on the Palm or trying to use a Handheld PC on a dial up modem. You know the commands are getting through to the device; you have to wait for the device to catch up.
Beyond that, there’s a bunch of other questions that simply can’t be answered by sales staff. What do PDF’s look like on it? What libraries are supporting it? When will a web browser be included? Are you doing an XL version like Amazon’s Kindle? Will the AT&T 3G service be free for life? For people buying books on a regular basis – typically me – this would be a good device… provided that there was a good story around buying books. B&N and Borders carry more weight with me – for books – than Amazon just because that’s what they do. Amazon started with books and then branched out. Do I think they will shitcan their books? No, but I also think B&N will have more available over time. But the question there is price.
I watched the CD industry drive itself into the ground over price. In 1985, CD’s were being sold for $16 [MSRP]. In 2005, CD’s were being sold for $20 [MSRP]. Over the span of 20 years, it got cheaper to make blank media, cheaper to create album art, cheaper to make music, cheaper to master music, and cheaper to produce the entire CD package because of smaller cases/boxes/etc. Record makers will tell you it’s because of piracy that this happened… they had to recover their costs. OK, fine, whatever, but when the digital versions of these CD’s came out, they weren’t priced at $20 either… the price dropped to $11-ish because it was obvious that it took less money to make an eCopy than a whole physical package. And the industry was quiet, once DRM [theoretically] reduced the threat of piracy… it tells me that at $11 they were making more – by selling more – than they were at $20 in stores. The problem with eBooks is that I don’t see this happening. I see publishers saying “Well, the book was $24.95 in hardcover. It should be $24.95 in electronic format because it’s the same material!” I don’t see them “getting” that customers know that books have been expensive – up to now – because of materials… COGS for actual paper these days must be insane.
Never mind the fact that books are still “niche” compared to the usage that CD’s and DVD’s get… the following of people that buy hardcovers has got to be shrinking – why not grow the “must have, first day!” market by discounting the books? I fear they won’t get it. Not to mention the problem that I’d face with my own library… I’ve got at least 150 books running around my house. I want to digitize them rather than rebuying them, especially because a number of them aren’t in print anymore.
Add to that the fact that I can buy a book at Amazon or B&N and already read it on desktop, laptop, netbook, and phone… the e-Ink screen does make for the best electronic reading display I’ve seen but I don’t know that it’s that good… good enough to add another device to the “recharge before flight” list.
Will *I* get one? In spite of all of the above, I still don’t know. As an aside, for all the press that Apple is getting for “thinking” about building a tablet device, I still wonder what the purpose of it is – I feel the same way about the nook. Tablets have come and gone many times over – I only ever see them in doctor offices. If Apple drops a Tablet tomorrow, it will likely be the same size as the nook and Kindle. It will have a full color, full touch display, with all the bells and whistles of an iPhone. But will it be a good book reader without the e-Ink screen? Likely not…
But man what I wouldn’t give to have my entire book collection fit into such a small and portable package…