Woohoo, Nook And Kindle Just Dropped In Price!

[second exodous]

Well, the kindle, the small one, just had a price cut $259 to $189, pretty good, but the Nook released a version minus the 3G so it is down to $149. I think the iPad, and tablets in general, have slowed down sells a little bit and they need to be more competitive.

I think the magic number would be $99 but now I'm considering the Nook Wi-Fi. I would never use the 3G, I have wifi, and it has a hackable version of Android on it so I think it is for me. I'll wait a few days and see what I think but I am leaning more towards an e-ink display over a tablet, easier on the eyes, and also a lot less to do on e-ink but read(big bonus).

 

[Orion4874]

Yeah, the Nook is lookin' good to me as well. Just got their e-mail today.

 

[rsuryase]

Yes, competition is ALWAYS good.

 

[second exodous]

Yes, competition is ALWAYS good.

I thought the color e-readers would bring down the price but Apple is just as good. In the US there are only like 3 people that make e-reader, like maybe 6 world wide. I thought the people that sell e-ink were going to get in trouble for price gouging, no way it costs as much as they say.

 

[rsuryase]

Color E-ink is holy grail of ereaders. I think it's achievable though, maybe 10 years.

 

[second exodous]

Color E-ink is holy grail of ereaders. I think it's achievable though, maybe 10 years.

Wow, I don't think it is 10 years away, maybe two at the most. The same company that makes e-ink right now is already saying color is close. Like you mentioned above competition is good and multiple companies realize that color is the holy grail, like you also said above, so when one color e-ink display comes out it won't be long until we see more. Right now I'd be happy with something to just read books on, that is all I really want. I used to read a lot of comics and when color comes out in how many ever years I'll upgrade and sell my Nook, or keep it just to read on and preserve my color display for just color.

To get around the high prices of e-books I'll build one of these and just do what I do right now, buy used books and then I'll digitize them and keeping the dead tree edition for backup. The publishing industry is going through what the music industry was going through, they think a digital copy should be as much as a physical copy even though you can take out mass producing the product, shipping it, and stocking it in brick and mortar retail outlets. Oh well, I don't think the insane prices of e-books now will stifle technological progression.

 

[second exodous]

Well, I caved, I ordered a nook. I basically had 3 options, the kindle, the nook, or the kobo. I live in the US and these 3 are based around book stores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. If it was up to what store I buy the most books from Amazon would have won with its kindle hands down. For formats the kindle is out since it can't read epub, the format that I like the best on my computer, it is pretty much the future as it's an open standard that is HTML based. That left the nook and the kobo. Between these tow it wasn't difficult to decide price wise but feature wise it was an easy sell for the nook. Also, both the B&N store and the Borders store sell epub formated books but only the nook is able to read books bought from both stores, the kobo can't read books bought from B&N stores. I don't know why, this says more bad things for B&N than it does for the kobo, I'm actually expecting it to have a software update that will fix this issue but for now the nook wins.

The kobo was smaller but I watched videos of the blue d-pad and the reviewers didn't like it and it just didn't look like it worked too well. Also, why a big square blue button? It is distracting and just plain ugly. Also another plus for the nook is it runs Android, can be opened, and I'm sure some day will be 100% hacked. I don't really plan on pirating books but I'm a firm believer in 'if you can't open it you don't own it' and also up-cycling things, what will I turn the nook into when I get my next e-reader? If hacked 100% I'll put it on the front of my case to replace the LEDs, no more blinding lights telling me my computer is on, it will simply say 'ON'.

Oh well, I hope I don't regret buying a nook, I don't read a lot, maybe a book a month on average, maybe a little bit more, but that is because I'm always find myself in this situation: 'crap, I forgot my book, if I had brought it I could have been reading while I wait' sort of thing. The nook will ride in my backpack or car and go where I go. I also don't like to beat up books, I feel bad when I make a new book look worn, so the nook will be good in this regard, once it is beat up I'll get used to it and not need to go through beating it up again like I would on the next book.

 

[migo]

$99 is the magic # for me too. I played with a Kobo E-Reader in Chapters which launched at $149, and it was pretty good, but I could do without the bluetooth, and I'd prefer a central D-pad.

 

[second exodous]

$99 is the magic # for me too. I played with a Kobo E-Reader in Chapters which launched at $149, and it was pretty good, but I could do without the bluetooth, and I'd prefer a central D-pad.

Yeah, d-pad placement on the kobo meant you could only control it with the right hand, well, when you were holding it one-handed. I thought $99 was the magic number for me but that probably won't happen for 6 or more months, I just though 'Is spending $50 bucks now worth the use of it for 6 months?' Summer is when I read the most, just something about being outside in nature makes me want to read, so best for me to get it now. Bluetooth is so you can tether to your phone and buy that way, but for books couldn't one just wait till they were in a wifi spot?

Well, it shipped through some weird company, Argix Direct, so I don't know how long it will take to get to me. I don't know if it is something special for B&N or a company that ships for others also. Apparently they take it as far as the post office in your area and then USPS delivers it. Weird. Oh well, they will have tracking numbers tomorrow, hope it gets here by the middle of next week.

 

[Jourdy288]

My Palm Tungsten T|5 doesn't have a screen that large, but hey... Tell me how you like your Nook once you get it.
TBH, E-Readers never really appealed to me. I prefer something with... A little bit more under the hood

 

[klikklak]

I've had a PRS00 and now I have a Irex Iliad. The iliads splendid, but it has long boot up times and it's big so its even more fragile. I carried my PRS500 around everywhere but it broke fairly soon, so I advise you all to be careful with e-ink screens. (Mind you I managed to break a nokia 770, the internet tablet, too despite the fact that it had a metal cover for the screen) But having the Iliad for home is nice, but it's not good for travels so I'd like a 5" reader. Pocketbook 360 is the best, but it's also quite expensive at 240€ or so. I wish these price reductions will reach europe soon, hell, I'd be happy with a Sony PRS300 if it was cheap enough.

Anyway, if the price is right and you're literate, you can't really go wrong with an ebook reader, they're really nice bits of kit that prove useful over and over again.

 

[Orion4874]

Well, I caved, I ordered a nook. I basically had 3 options, the kindle, the nook, or the kobo. I live in the US and these 3 are based around book stores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. If it was up to what store I buy the most books from Amazon would have won with its kindle hands down. For formats the kindle is out since it can't read epub, the format that I like the best on my computer, it is pretty much the future as it's an open standard that is HTML based. That left the nook and the kobo. Between these tow it wasn't difficult to decide price wise but feature wise it was an easy sell for the nook. Also, both the B&N store and the Borders store sell epub formated books but only the nook is able to read books bought from both stores, the kobo can't read books bought from B&N stores. I don't know why, this says more bad things for B&N than it does for the kobo, I'm actually expecting it to have a software update that will fix this issue but for now the nook wins.

The kobo was smaller but I watched videos of the blue d-pad and the reviewers didn't like it and it just didn't look like it worked too well. Also, why a big square blue button? It is distracting and just plain ugly. Also another plus for the nook is it runs Android, can be opened, and I'm sure some day will be 100% hacked. I don't really plan on pirating books but I'm a firm believer in 'if you can't open it you don't own it' and also up-cycling things, what will I turn the nook into when I get my next e-reader? If hacked 100% I'll put it on the front of my case to replace the LEDs, no more blinding lights telling me my computer is on, it will simply say 'ON'.

Oh well, I hope I don't regret buying a nook, I don't read a lot, maybe a book a month on average, maybe a little bit more, but that is because I'm always find myself in this situation: 'crap, I forgot my book, if I had brought it I could have been reading while I wait' sort of thing. The nook will ride in my backpack or car and go where I go. I also don't like to beat up books, I feel bad when I make a new book look worn, so the nook will be good in this regard, once it is beat up I'll get used to it and not need to go through beating it up again like I would on the next book.

Damn, when did Borders come out with an e-reader. I completely missed that and I used to work at a Borders! Of course back then they sold the Sony Reader, but your right, the Nook was definately the better buy.

 

[second exodous]

^^ I didn't hear about the Borders Kobo until I read a news article about the nook and kindle price drops. For size it's the best, and they give out a $20 gift certificate when you buy it so it is like you're paying $130. If all you want is an e-reader with very little else it's a good buy. The screen of it and the nook look like they are from the exact same run of e-ink, so there is no difference there. The possibility of being able to hack it in the future was just too much to turn down though so I went with the nook.

I think now that the two biggest e-readers here in the US just plummeted in price the world will soon follow. A few of the reviews I watched and read on the nook actually came from Germany, I guess they are pretty popular there. I don't think Amazon or B&N are loosing money on them, they were either making a ton of money before and just breaking even now. Book sales will make up for the lost profit of the price drops I'm sure, so selling them for a little more than cost is a good strategy. I read Sony dropped also but none of the news stories I read said how much. I wanted one tied to a store though so I didn't even look at Sony. Too bad that the irex went under, I thought their largest model with the touch e-ink screen was the best so far, if that dropped to $299 I might have bought one of those. They could also use any DRM epub book, so I could have still used B&N to buy.

It has been in New Jersey for two days now. What makes me mad is they still charged me tax, if I would have known that I would have drove for two hours to my nearest B&N and just bought one! I have to go buy a few other things anyway. Oh well, try to save a few bucks and this is what happens. I actually wasn't even thinking I could go buy it since I'm so used to the Kindle not being sold in stores.

Hopefully it will leave NJ soon, maybe it has and their tracking just sucks.

 

[second exodous]

Well, I got it, and noe I realize I have been waiting for it for my entire life!!!

I think the main advantage is something I have never really thought about: consistency. Books come in all sizes, but with this it will always be the same size and you don't have to adjust to a new weight or a different way to hold your book. Also, the fonts and the sizes will always be the same if you use the epub format. Right now there are only 3 fonts to choose from but that is enough until they get more, even when they do I'll probably default to one and never switch it again. The sizes are nice, meaning the sizes to choose from. They have freaking huge 5 words per page(who uses that?) and really tiny, smaller than any book I ever read. I pick the second from the bottom, medium, looking right now it is the very middle one.

At first I thought the flashing would bug me but it has not after a few page turns, I don't notice it anymore. Also it is fast enough that if I press the forward button it takes my eyes that much time to go to the top of the page, so no problem there.

The nook store is alright, good sales over all, but not as fluent as a webpage or actually going to a book store. I still use my computer to buy books and then check for new content on my nook. I did notice that the buying from the nook you sometimes get better prices than buying them online so I always check both after I found it on their website.

We-browser is abysmal, I have used it to read news sites but for browsing it sucks, this might be improved though.

Battery life is short, but I'm on wifi a lot, if I turn it off and don't wake up the LCD screen it last a lot lot longer. I don't think it would last more than 4 day though, I'm not sure, like I said I'm looking stuff up on the nook store a lot.

Pages numbers on the nook act strangely though. I think the epub format records a set number of pages so no matter what size you make the font it always shows the set number. If I watch the page counter I notice that on some books I turn two pages before the page number changes, and sometimes it skips a page number altogether which leads me to believe it is rounding on what page I'm on. I think it is the epub format because books I download off of Project Gutenberg do the exact same thing. I hope that this is fixed in the format itself. For archival purposes I can see this though, in the format itself you would want to record what word was on what page and exactly how many pages were in the book in its original printing. In normal day to day reading it would be nice to know exactly how many times you have to click the next button to get to the end of the book, maybe this could be an option on e-readers?

Reading on it is a pleasure, the e-ink technology is not perfect by any stretch of the mind but it is much much better than anything else we have now and when you get used to it it is great. It is great to download classics from Project Gutenberg for absolutely free, I'm starting working my way though Jules Verne right now, I've only bought a few books but I think from now on no dead tree editions for me, all digital from here on out.

So if you haven't gotten one because you think the technology is lacking for reading black and white text then I can tell you it works great for that. If you're waiting for color to read comic books or browse the web then yeah, get an LCD or wait for color e-ink. I read a text a lot more than comic books or web pages so this is great for me. the device itself, the nook, I like, I tried navigating with keyboards, buttons, and nubs on other e-readers and couldn't get the hang of it. I didn't try that hard but a color LCD display to navigate with is much better for me even if it does use the battery a little more than what I like.