For my birthday this year I received an awesome gift, a Nook Touch. I have been looking at e-book readers for a while and wanted one that was e-paper rather than an iPad or other backlit tablet. Granted, the tablet device gives you one great advantage, multiple platforms. However, this comes at a multiple platform cost since I could buy four e-paper devices for the price of one tablet. Not to mention that difference in battery life.
I spoke with many of my friends who had Nooks and Kindles of different generations to get their thoughts on the platforms that they had chosen. With positive feedback from each platform I was still left indecisive. While the Kindle had a larger collection of free books and inexpensive Kindle Singles, the Nook was supported as part of the Ohio eBook Project that would allow me do checkout books from the public library system onto my device.
I weighed my own experience, I had the Nook and Kindle apps for the PC, I have purchased books on both (free or under $2.00) and saw little difference except for age of the devices (1st gen Nook vs 3rd gen Kindle). I am typically a person who never buys first generation devices because I hate to spend money of buggy devices. Thus my mind was made up to get the Kindle 3.
That was until I found myself in a Barnes & Noble one afternoon a few days after the Nook Touch was released, and I was drawn to it. It was weird, I did not know it was a touch screen device, but I touched the screen for navigation without thinking. I was surprised at how responsive it was and how quickly the screen refreshed. With the price of the two devices the same, I had to re-evaluate my choice.
I did a little research, but since the Nook Touch was new there was little information to be found. I did discover that the OS was a custom version of Android, similar to that of the Nook Color, so it should be stable. I also just could not get over the capacitive touch e-paper display. I decided to give it a shot and make the Nook Touch my choice.
After unwrap and a complete charging I was off to use my new device. Sadly, I was initially disappointed with the choice of books from the Ohio eBook Project, more specifically the number of formats. The project hosts books online for public download in four formats (.epub, .pdf, .wma & .mp3). The Nook supports the .epub and .pdf formats, but each title is not available in all of the formats, and the number available in .wma is the winner by far. Needless to say, of the over 10,000 books available for download, a very limited number were supported on my device. A 30 minute search yielded three holds and one checkout. Later I would abandon the idea of the ebook formats and just use the Overdrive MP3 player on my phone to listen to the .mp3 formatted books for which there are a number of titles.
So I have now basically lost one of the formats I was planning to use for my ebook consumption. I still had a number of .PDF formatted books I often used for reference and free and low priced books from B&N. As I spent more time getting to know my new device, I was disappointed to find that the OS was very limited. Yes, it was an ebook reader and it did that fine. I was especially happy with how it displayed .pdf books. However, the OS was still very limited considering that B&N had built one with Android before. I was surprised to see that the built in web browser was hidden until I began to experience how often it crashed. I also became annoyed with the B&N ads at the bottom of the home screen. Since they changed so often, I figure that the WiFi connection may be busier than I thought. The B&N website promised 60 days with the WiFi off and 30 days with it on. They have since changed the website and a battery life with WiFi on is no longer stated. This is because at the end of week one of leaving the WiFi on, the Nook would not turn on. The battery was completely dead. I recharged it and it was back to normal. I then turned off the WiFi and hoped for better. Two days later however, it locked up while in use. I had to perform a hard reset, taking it back to stock to unlock it.
It was still a new device, but I thought I would look online to see if others were having similar issues, sadly yes. The battery life seemed to be the main concern, even with WiFi off. I decided to take it into a local Barnes & Noble and ask them about the problems I experienced. They were of course surprised and no one had ever heard of any problems. Their Nook expert admitted that he had read some things online and that he was sure that B&N would release a patch to fix the issue. Since there is only a 14 return window on the Nook, I opted to return the device. Two weeks is such a narrow timeframe for returns I felt as if B&N knew that while initial quality would be viewed as high, the Nook Touch did not have the endurance for the long haul.
I have a Kindle 3 now. I have had the WiFi on for three weeks on the original battery charge and I love being able to upload items to the device via email (a feature I was unaware of prior). The screen contrast is also a bit better than the Nook. I miss the touch screen interface, but not the problems.
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