While it has been one of the worst kept secrets for a few weeks now, Barnes & Noble has officially announced their new e-reader named nook.
While we didn’t know what the name was until today, the fact that Barnes & Noble was coming out with an e-reader was no secret. Even most of the details of the nook were out before today, but it’s still always nice to get the official word.
While e-readers seem to be coming out faster than most people can read a novel, the nook does appear to be several steps forward of Amazon’s popular Kindle. The design appears to be more ergonomic, has a replaceable battery, swappable back covers, an on-screen keyboard as opposed to a physical one and so on. The 6″ e-ink powered book display looks especially crisp, but thanks to the lower color display, you can browse for new books in full-color and then download them wirelessly via Wi-Fi or over AT&T’s 3G network.
One of the features that especially caught my eye was the ability to read books on your iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry or computer, and then when you switch off to your nook, it will pick up right where you left off, and vice-versa. Especially nice in this hectic go, go, go world of ours today.
LendMe is also a new feature that is a bit shocking in that it allows you to “lend” any book from your account to anyone else with an account for 14 days, even if they don’t have a nook. Say you’re reading a book on your nook and you want to loan it to your friend who has an iPod Touch. All they have to do is download the free Barnes & Noble app and you can lend them that book at no cost. Publishers must be okay with this, but what a step forward!
The number of books for the nook is also quite impressive in that they have given you access to 500,000 public domain books that you can access directly from your nook, as well as 500,000 more you can purchase. The actual device only has 2GB of memory on board, but it does have a microSD slot that can use memory cards up to 16GB, so you can store an astounding number of books on this device via that method.
The nook also has a built-in speaker as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack so you can listen to MP3s on it as well.
Overall it’s an impressive device and will be retailing for $259 with the first ones shipping out in late November. If you still are torn over the Kindle, you can check out this comparison sheet to see which one is more for you.
Personally, I’m thinking the nook has pretty much trounced the Kindle. Course, I haven’t gotten to use either in person, but I am far more tempted to purchase a nook then I ever was a Kindle.
