How would you change Barnes & Noble's Nook?
By Darren Murph 
posted February 12th 2010 11:37PM
posted February 12th 2010 11:37PM
posted February 12th 2010 11:37PM
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Hmmm, not let Amazon delete my books on a whim?
@Dante of the Inferno
Nook not kindle.
@Dante of the Inferno
I don't think even Amazon can delete stuff off a Barnes & Noble device.
why did the lower screen get shoddily painted out?
@cswright: It's not edited out. It's just off. It shuts off after a while to conserve battery life.
Pixel Qi would be cool, but I like the hardware as-is. The software could use some adjustments. The touchscreen is better with 1.2, but it's still slow. Also, the Organization of the ebooks could be better (i.e. folders). Also, the online store, and especially the in-store experience needs a lot of work. It's hard to navigate and see what's available. Even worse is just getting online. Half the time it takes forever to get online, and sometimes I can't tell if it's still working. Thankfully, I don't get online much, but when I do, it's never a good experience.
Make it match the iPad, in terms of graphical flourishes and apps.
Oh also, let that wild Android loose!
make the next and previous page buttons more durable.
I dropped by a BN to play with a nook and the button was so bad that i had to press the button several times (with several second's pause in between)
@MiketheVee
-Improve the responsiveness of the touchscreen - both the actual screen and the software which seems sluggish.
-Fewer taps to manage things would be nice, but it's not a dealbreaker.
-Better power management. There's no reason for the WiFi (and I'm guessing 3G as well) to wake up periodically unless I wake up the device.
-Unleash Android apps (though obviously that comes at the cost of power management): a browser would be awesome.
@MiketheVee I'd say the biggest thing missing, that nobody has really mentioned is a "go to page" option. For schoolbooks this is a must, as well as books that aren't from the B&N store and don't have accessible chapters.
The touch screen seems pretty usable with the 1.2 patch. Also, some way of getting content on aside from sideloading it, for example e-mailing etc. I think the Kindle has this.
Viewing of .doc and .docx files.
Better .pdf viewing, if it's an image pdf it doesn't really resize it at all and it can be pretty unviewable.
@MiketheVee One of the least known features of the Nook (which I discovered by accident) is the "page-turn gesture" on the lower touch screen (only works when blacked out). Gently swipe (about 1/4 inch) in the direction you want to turn the page. Takes a little getting used to but works about 90% of the time. I hardly ever use the buttons.
When I mentioned this to a B&N store manager he didn't even know about it.
@Darthus better PDF support and "Go to page", definitely. I'd also like it if "My Documents" would keep a directory structure, rather than just listing all contents of sub-directories in one big list.
@Varun
>>Better power management. There's no reason for the WiFi (and I'm guessing 3G as well) to wake up periodically unless I wake up the device.
There is if you subscribe to a daily. I've got my newspaper right there in the morning when I wake up for the commute. But yeah, you're right, it sucks when I'm not using the thing and find 10% of my battery gone.
@mrenerstat Works great while jogging on a treadmill too. I size up the font before I get on, and swipe with my finger which needn't be as precise as a button press.
Pixel Qi
I should have waited for the iPad. I'm sure this is going to piss off the usual anti apple few, but really, I made a big mistake.
@aria You realize everyone can see your previous posts simply by clicking your name.
@aria You do realize that the ipad isn't an e reader right? nor did it wait one month to have pixel Qi.
Rename it the "bnook" to keep the B and N, but it's a silent b.
@klew
that name would = fail
@klew Or you could drop the k and add in the b, hence the BN noob
Include a EULA clause that say B&N won't delete stuff that I bought.
remove the e-ink screen, make it work like iPAD.
YES iPAD.!!!1
@rhezaganteng You're crazy. E-ink = battery life and happy eyes. Two things that you should want with an e-book reader.
@rhezaganteng
i'm not sure why you would comment that on an EBOOK READER. the point is not to have a screen that's not gonna hurt your eyes. stupid.
@redhed OK the E-ink vs. bright screen issue is understandabale, but why the focus on battery life? As Steve Jobs has said, who reads for dozens of hours without stopping or recharging?
@Carney
As Steve Jobs says: "Nobody reads anymore"
@rhezaganteng
Maybe a better solution for all of us is for you to delete your account and go hide your head in shame for posting such an inane comment?
Just A Suggestion...
@Carney If I go on holiday I don't want to take chargers or find and pack adapters for foreign power sockets.
Nook isn't available here in the UK yet (at least I don't think it is!) but I have another e-reader (kindle). If I turn the wireless off I can get two weeks worth of reading without having to recharge which is great.
@Carney more like days without recharging
@matthewbostwick Thank you! I am glad that (most) people commenting on this article actually have a clue. All the iPad articles have people (including the authors of the article, even on this site) saying what a better e-reader the iPad is, even though it is missing the main feature of an e-reader: the e-paper screen. They talk about how much better a color screen is, ignoring the fact that LCD predates e-paper, which the Kindle chose for a good reason. I can only conclude that people who take the iPad seriously as an e-reader are illiterate and just want to look at the pictures. They must have had someone type the blog posts and comments for them.
Improve the screen technology (faster refresh, higher contrast) and make it larger more word area like a real book! Throw an a-si solar cell on the back optimized for indoor light. A better CPU, more memory....
I would make it not suck.
make the page turn buttons softer. the click action requires too much effort.
The nook is Ok, but still very sluggish with 1.2 firmware. So much that you have to be very careful and observant when typing in a WEP key as you can never be sure if a button press takes unless you are actively watching it. I think it needs a better CPU
I was VERY dissapointed that the MicroSD slot was SD only- not SHDC.
A Text-to-Speech option would be pretty cool
It is pretty nice that you can download free books from Google via the search- but not so cool that you need to have a credit card on file with B&N just to download these free files.
Some of my friends complain about the screen refresh; it seems to dump the next page of text over the existing before doing the screen wipe (which seems weird).
@Broo It is SDHC, I currently have a 4GB SDHC card in mine. Also the page seeming to appear over the current page is a e-ink thing. That's why the screen flashes. E-ink ghosts heavily, and thus pixels have to be flashed back and forth to get them to clear properly.
Make the page turn gesture work better. Could use a little fast processor as well. I am otherwise pleased with mine.
@Broo Why would they even make it a micro slot rather than full size standard SD? The latter is more common and cheaper. micro would make sense in a very small device, but the Nook is not an iPod Shuffle size MP3 player.
@mastapsi My Nook will not even recognize the existence either of my 16GB MicroSHDC cards- and the back reader has 'MicroSD' written by the slot- not 'MicroSDHC'. I checked the web and the posts were indicating that it requires a non-SHDC card. 4GB was the transition for SD and SDHC cards; maybe there is enough compatibility between the two formats to allow either 4GB format to work in the Nook?
For the screen refresh, I am familiar with e-Ink transitions (I have an old Sony PRS-505 and my roommate has a Kindle 2). I never actually noticed any issues, but a co-worker said that the transition was 'garbled' and more distracting than the Kindle. Instead of just blacking the screen, wiping and re-drawing, it looks like the Nook draws the next page over the existing page and then wipes the screen... it is just a different (and somewhat distracting now that I was made aware of it) transition.
@Carney lol- good point!
I have heard that the OS is also on a MicroSD internal to the Nook. (I did a SoftRoot on my Nook so I have not fully opened it up to verify).
Let me retract the SHDC statement; it appears that the Nook may just be a bit particular about the kinds of memory it uses.
The B&N Nook specifications page states:
Memory Expansion: virtually unlimited using Micro SD expansion slot**
**MicroSD or MicroSD HC memory cards sold separately
Nook Dragon Ball edition, with all 42 volumes pre-installed, and autographed by Akira Toriyama.
@Virus Cannon ...a digital autograph?
Not a big fan of Dragonball but themed specials (like consoles which come bundled with games) would be a nice idea.
For example, the release of the latest Sherlock Holmes movie would've been a good chance to sell an edition with the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes books.
Screenshot features Song of Ice and Fire. Cool.
Isn't the purpose of an eBook reader to make it more convenient to read? Not an exercise in patience...
And to the obligatory Apple-zealots;
THERE IS A REASON WHY EBOOK READERS USE E-INK!!!
@Ignotus
I can think of two reasons, both valid, why ebook readers use e-ink.
They aren't good enough reasons to keep me from giving my Kindle to my sister and buying an iPad.
I'm not so worried about battery life. I find my iPhone has exceptional battery life, when I have it in airplane mode. I keep it in airplane mode when I'm at home (the metal roof keeps the signal out), and I keep it in airplane mode when I'm working in England, because I don't want any roaming charges, and I bought a pay-as-you-go phone for only five pounds plus a twenty pound top-up.
By the way, I have to do the same with my Kindle. The battery can go from 100% down to zero in a few hours if it has to keep trying for a signal. (Though I haven't tried it since the last update.)
The iPad, with a bigger battery and without 3G should last as long as I need it to. The flight is only ten hours, and I won't stare at ANY display for ten hours straight.
As for the display, I'm one of those lucky ones who doesn't notice any ill-effects from reading from an LCD display.
With the objections of some essentially neutralized, I'm free to choose based on the things I like about the iPad.
For me, the iPad, with its ability to be so much more than an ebook reader, is the best ebook reader.
@Ignotus - All the e-Ink "reasons" are pretty much unproven until there are completing products with normal LCDs. So far that hasn't happened. It's not clear to me at all that the two e-ink benefits outweigh the disadvantages. But we're going to find out son enough.
Sue it out of existence for ripping off the Alex and then force B&N to sell the Alex at no profit to them while requiring they provide free tech support for the users.
@TractorNipples
THAT
@mtnDewFTW
The nook already runs off Android. Not that I get the fascination with Android anyway.