Nook Series from B&N

Book reading is a habit, hobby and it is like music for some people. The feeling of holding onto a good book, turning the physical pages and to have decorative bookmarks that reflects the reader's personality has its effect on people. Like any other product there is an electronic version of this also and that is the eReaders. eReaders have been around for quite sometime from Sony, but has been made quite popular in the recent years by number of affordable devices and options to buy eBooks from. The lack of physical pages and bulk of a book definitely needs some getting used to, but has its own benefits



Barnes & Noble has been around for a long time, but recently they have been facing tough competition from Amazon like any other brick and mortar store. They have trailed in the book sales and more importantly have been late to the eBook channel, with the introduction of Nook, almost a year after Kindle. When the first generation of Nook was released, Amazon already had the second generation of Kindle (just like Apple with the iPhone series).

Nook had a good, sleek design and a touch screen interface that was touted to be the difference and reason for consumers to go for the device. The internal software was based on Android, but did not show any signs of the standard Android interface or user experience. It was re-designed for one purpose that is to be a eReader. The software did have its woes of being sluggish and the initial delivery delays gave a slow start to the device.

Recently B&N released the Nook Color, which definitely takes it up a step ahead of Amazon. While Amazon has the lead and has been quoting the best sales and millions of Kindle units sold and was rumored to have been working on the 3rd generation of the Kindle with Mirasol display, B&N released Nook Color with LCD display to lure customers to give the benefit of touch screen for going beyond eReader.

Nook Color though primarily released as a eReader, has extended usage for magazines and children book (with narration). In its current version, it has basic touch screen capabilities and applications, but is likely to be upgraded and extended to run Android 2.2 In this form factor and ability, the device is not just competing against Kindle / Sony eReader, but also against iPad. For $249 this is definitely a more affordable tablet and if B&N can just unlock the true potential of the device and give access to the Apps, then we definitely have a more affordable and practical device in hand.

I personally had to debate  a lot between Nook and Nook Color and finally decided to go for the Nook. The primary reason for to keep my reading habits alive and a touch screen, internet enabled device is most likely to distract me from that. I have checked out Nook Color in store and used Nook daily for over a month now and I am definitely impressed with both the devices and strongly recommend them for casual readers and as a low end Tablet. I was all the more impressed with B&N when the worked on my device to resolve my problem, without any questions or hazzles.

Nook platform also supports the Adobe DRM standards, which means that I am not just locked to one source for my eBooks. I have purchased my recent books from Google eBooks (http://books.google.com/ebooks) without any sales tax and at the same price as that of Amazon.

I will continue reading on my Nook and am looking forward to the unlocking upgrade to Nook Color...

Reaction to: Engadget:  Nook Series Sales Update
Reference Site: Nook Site