What Do You Want to Know About the “Nook,” Barnes & Noble’s New E-Reader?
by Peter Kafka
Posted on October 21, 2009 at 4:18 AM PT
Not sure what Barnes & Noble has to say about the “Nook” that it didn’t discuss yesterday, when it unveiled its new e-reader. But the bookseller’s press conference this morning, scheduled for 9:30 EDT, gives us an opportunity to try a little crowd-sourcing experiment: Send me any questions you have and I’ll try to ask the company on your behalf.
You can reach me via email (peter@allthingsd.com) or by leaving a comment below. I can’t promise any results, but I’ll do my best.
For the record: From afar, the Nook appears very similar to Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle, with a few additional bells and whistles–a second color screen at the bottom of the device for navigation, wireless connection from AT&T (T) instead of Sprint (S), Wi-Fi connectivity, etc. The most intriguing tweaks, from my perspective, are a “sharing” feature and the fact that the Nook runs on Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, which might allow for interesting upgrades over time.
But all of these features seem to be aimed at tech’s earliest adopters and not the general book-buying public that Barnes & Noble (BKS), Amazon, Sony (SNE) and everyone else is hoping to court. Recall that in the early days of music players, plenty of competitors offered competitively priced gadgets with features that Apple’s (AAPL) iPod didn’t have, and today, it’s like we never heard of them. My hunch is that we might see a similar dynamic play out with e-readers.
Comments
I’ve been considering a dedicated ebook reader. I’ve been a fan of ebooks since the Palm Pilot days. Today I’m quite happy to read a complete novel on my iPod Touch with ebook software. However what I’d really like to be able to do is read technical PDF’s provided by vendors without having to open them on my PC.
I’ve heard that other ebook readers require users to convert PDF’s before reading with 3rd party software. Once converted the converted document can be transferred to the ebook reader. I’ve seen how this software converts PDF’s and it’s not at all readable for the manuals that I get from the vendors.
What will be the process for getting PDF’s to the Nook device? Is it just a matter of copying the files to a removable storage card on my PC/Mac and then inserting the card into the Nook? Or do I need to go through a conversion process first?
Can I take highlight text and add notes to the PDF’s? Will those notes be viewable inside of the PDF when I copy them back to my PC/Mac? Are the notes readable in Adobe Acrobat and Mac Preview?
Can I open password protected PDF’s on the nook?
Thanks
Posted by William Detmar at October 21st, 2009 at 6:07 amFWIW, Nook’s info page says you can directly load PDFs into reader. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/
Posted by Peter Kafka at October 21st, 2009 at 6:21 amDoes the color portion of the screen turn into a virtual keyboard? If not, how do you annotate content?
Posted by Andrew Clarke at October 21st, 2009 at 2:21 pmi like this better than kindle…good for b&n
Posted by Sam Harrison at October 21st, 2009 at 7:42 pmI don’t care who else does what, but i love, love, love my sony e reader!! Library books, free book sites and soon wireless!! best e reader.
Posted by tara candelaria at November 9th, 2009 at 11:46 am