Barnes And Noble Nook

The Nook, which is Barnes And Noble’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle series of eBook readers, should make the eBook reader competition heat up a bit, especially for the 2009 Christmas season. At a price point of $259, compared to the Amazon Kindle 2 price of $279, the Nook stands squarely in the way of Amazon’s eBook market domination.

The Nook is a very interesting device, seemingly designed to appeal to fans of the iPhone. Clean looking, with a 6-inch eInk display, the Nook introduces a new control scheme to the eBook world – a 3.5 inch color touch-sensitive LCD screen. This screen has been placed right below the main viewing screen and is intended to allow the user a way to navigate by book cover, to give the user an on-screen keyboard and to generally operate the Nook.

Running the 1.5 version Google’s Android operating system, the Nook is the first eBook reader that can claim to do so. The coordination with Google goes deeper than the Nook operating system, however. The partnership that Barnes and Noble has developed with Google means that there are more than a million titles are available for the Nook, with many of those titles made available through Google’s public domain title distribution network. Of course, newspapers and magazines are also made available to read on the Nook as well.

Because Barnes and Noble is an actual brick and mortar store, as opposed to Amazon’s internet-only presence, the Nook will offer some features that the Kindle is unable to offer. Not only does Barnes and Noble offer free Wi-Fi for Nook owners at their stores, but there is also special content that only Nook owners will be able to access at Barnes and Noble locations.

Technologically, the Nook competes well with the Kindle 2.

Both eBook readers come with two gigs of memory storage and can store about 1500 books, but the Nook adds a Micro SD expansion slot that ups the ante somewhat. After all, a 16 gig card will hold over 17,000 books – a big jump for people who want to carry a library in their pocket. You can also start reading a book on your Nook, and then keep reading where you left off on your Mac or PC thanks to Barnes & Noble’s Reading Now technology, which is virtually the same type of feature as Amazon’s WhisperSync feature.

The Nook offers native PDF support, which means Nook owners can also read their own PDFs on the Nook, which is something Kindle 2 owners can’t do without converting the PDF first.

The Nook is able to play MP3s, either through the built-in mono speaker or by plugging in headphones.

An interesting difference between the Nook and the Kindle 2 is that the Kindle has an integrated battery and the Nook has a removeable battery. If you want, you can buy a fully-charged battery from any Barnes and Noble, or just keep an extra one to swap out.

Barnes and Noble’s made some tradeoffs with their eBook reader. The Nook does weigh an ounce more than the Kindle – 11.2 ounces vs. 10.2 ounces. The Nook is smaller but thicker than the Kindle. The Nook also comes up short when you look at battery life in comparison to the Kindle – 10 days vs. 14 days. And while the Nook does play back MP3 audio and has a built-in speaker, it doesn’t have the Kindle’s text-to-speech feature.

The Nook, again much like the Kindle, comes bundled with wireless 3G access through the AT&T network so you can download content wirelessly. The Nook also includes Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g) and, as mentioned previously, access to free Wi-Fi in all of Barnes & Noble’s stores.

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between the Nook and Amazon’s Kindle is that you can let your friends actually borrow a Nook eBook. This loan can be for up to 14 days, during which time your friends will be able to read that eBook on their Nook, or by using the Barnes & Noble e-reader available for PCs, Macs, the iPhone, some Motorola smartphones, and the BlackBerry.

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