Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Joining the e-reader crowd…

Despite all the hype that surrounded the announcement of the iPad (or perhaps, in some small way, because of it), I decided to finally buy an e-reader, and chose the Nook from Barnes & Noble as my preferred delivery device.

The reason I wanted an e-reader in the first place is because, well, I read. A lot. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-7 books a week, depending on the week. I’ve had all my books for several years and have read them all at least twice, because I enjoy revisiting a story, but I also like buying new books from my favorite authors, and discovering new authors. When I first heard about the Kindle, I thought, well, that’s neat, but I like the experience of reading an actual paper book. The smell, the feel, the experience of it. I love shopping for books and browsing in bookstores. I like bookshelves. All gravy for a book-lover, agreed?

But then, about this time last year, I took a vacation in Florida and, as per my habit, packed about 6 books in my suitcase and another 2-3 in my carryon, as well as my laptop. And since it rained a lot while I was there, I ended up buying a couple more books to entertain myself. And then I was stuck hauling a friggin’ 10-pound carryon all over the damn airport, what with my laptop and my six 500-page novels and my bottle of water, plus my purse. Right about then, I realized that perhaps carrying a 12-ounce device with 1500 books on it would be a superior experience to carrying 6 books of a pound each, at least for traveling purposes.

And then I bought a house and moved, and had to haul fifteen 30-pound boxes of books down 3 flights of stairs into the car and then up 2 more flights of stairs into their respective new homes. Okay, at that point I REALLY saw the appeal of an e-reader.

Coincidentally, Barnes & Noble announced their new e-reader only a few weeks later, and I instantly fell in love with the picture of it. The Kindle has never particularly appealed to me in terms of aesthetics, not that that would have stopped me in a Nook-less world, but I really liked the appearance of the Nook much better, not to mention the fact that it ran on Android (thus opening the opportunity for future app development), that it had wifi (Kindle doesn’t) and that it had an external storage slot for a microSD card, which the Kindle 1 had, but the Kindle 2 doesn’t. (Why not?!)

So, I set my sights on that, lusted over it throughout the holiday season, read a ton of reviews and even managed to get through all the bug reports and the iPad launch without feeling buyer’s remorse. I finally placed my order on January 20th for the February 12th ship date, but B&N had been shipping early, so I knew it was likely I’d have it sooner--and I did. It arrived on the 5th, apparently mere moments after the 1.2 firmware update was pushed out, fixing virtually all the bugs reported in the earlier versions, so it worked great right from the start.

Why didn’t I want an iPad? Well, first, it costs twice as much. Screw that. Second, like I said, I read a lot, and I wanted a device FOR reading. The iPad might be a cool multifunction device, but it’s still an LCD screen like any other LCD screen, and those just are not suited for reading for 3 or more hours at a time (as devoted book-lovers are likely to do). E-ink, on the other hand, emulates a printed page almost perfectly, and the contrast and lack of backlighting are far easier on the eyes. (For this reason, I doubt very much that the iPad will be a “Kindle killer” as predicted.) Yes, the iPad can browse the web and do all kinds of other things, but so what? I already have two laptops and a desktop computer. I don’t really need ANOTHER way to surf the web. Besides, there’s no reason the Nook can’t have a browser one day soon (there are plenty of Android developers chomping at the bit), and it has wifi AND 3G without the extra thirty bucks a month.

So, I’ve had the Nook almost a week now, and I friggin’ love it. The interface is very intuitive, loading content is very easy, and the reading experience is very book-like. So much so, that once I purchased a cover for it, I have to check myself to keep from “turning the page” and flipping from right to left, because there’s nothing ON the left side but the cover! One thing I have heard, and am watching carefully for, is that many users have found that a crack develops in the bevel, at the right-hand page-advance button. Not good. However, one doesn’t need to use the buttons to advance the page: the LCD screen also functions as a page turner with a simple swipe of the finger, which is actually strongly reminiscent of the motion used to turn a paper page. That’s not exactly an excuse for problems in the bevel manufacture, but hopefully the crack issue can be avoided by swiping instead of using the button.

Now I need to resist going crazy in B&N’s e-book store.