by Pete Wright
I triple-dog dare you to go into Barnes & Noble and not look at the Nook display. You won’t be able to do it. Though the device is all but sold out until early 2010, the monolithic in-store displays have fancy paper-cutouts in the shape of a Nook with features and specifications on them which I’m sure will be just fine wrapped and under the tree this Christmas, thank you very much.
The Nook (Technologizer’s great review here) is part of the latest gadget bubble to take hold of the elder and technorati set, the e-book reader. Like the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle before it, the Nook allows you to buy books from the Barnes & Nobel store, download them via 3g nearly instantly, and begin reading. The Nook brings not much to the discussion that the other two devices haven’t covered; E-Ink screen, fancy keyboard, books and newspapers. The killer features on the Nook that are supposed to wipe out the Sony and the Kindle are, well, two.
First, there’s a color screen. No, not the whole thing, just an awkward strip across the bottom which allows you to see small covers of your books, and converts to device navigation when you’re not browsing.
Second, you can lend books. This one might have been a game changer, as neither the Sony or the Kindle allow you to loan books to other device-weilding book mavens. A game-changer were it not for the fact that you can only loan a book once. Once. One time for that book, period. It’s a gift that’s only almost as good as not being able to loan books at all. With friends like these… yeesh.
I have the Kindle 2 — Amazon’s remix of their self-acclaimed hit e-book reader. I love it. For sitting down and reading a book with my feet up on the couch, with coffee, and maybe a cruller, it’s the perfect device. The screen is clear, and the fact that it’s not backlit means no eye-strain for long reads. It’s easy to navigate. It’s compact and terrific for vacations on which I’d usually lug along a bookbag. It’s the best way to read a newspaper, too. Seriously, dead-tree apologists haven’t spent enough time on the Kindle; it’s like having a newspaper that is clean, organized, and searchable, right there in your hands.
But, then, I love cross-word puzzles. The Kindle has a keyboard, so I assume I’ll just turn to the crossword and get solving, right? Nope. No dice. No crosswords on the Kindle. For that, you have to turn to something like the computer or the iPhone, which I happen to have in my pocket. OK, fine. No crosswords. How about books not in the Kindle fancy-format? You bet. PDF. Effective two weeks ago, Amazon announced that Kindle users can now drag PDFs to their Kindle 2′s when connected to their computers, or use their Kindle email address and have the documents processed and mailed for a fee.
Or, I could go back to my iPhone and read any damned thing I want right now, PDF or not. And this, right here, is why hardware e-book readers will be one of the shortest-lived gadgets in tech. They’re very cool, until you realize they’re never quite cool enough.
The Kindle epitomizes the paradox of the single function device: focus on one thing and do it exceptionally well, while your competitor focuses on nothing and delivers much with mediocrity. Turns out that in all but the most extreme cases, people want a device the does more, more often, and smaller. I can read my Kindle or my Nook books on my iPhone. I can read PDFs. I can edit documents and take pictures and send emails and play games that let me push people down stairs.
The hardware failings of the Kindle and this ilk come only when you have really discovered your delight in the device. You love reading so much on it, that you want to read more. You want to read email and webpages. But you can’t, not without suffering through the pain of lag in the E-Ink screen. You want speed, but you can’t have that either; the device was designed to do all the heavy lifting that comes with turning pages, for crying out loud. Anything more and you need a laptop.
Luckily, and where I happen to be quite bullish, is in the e-book as a technology and platform for further development. The best thing that could happen to reading books electronically would be for all these devices to fail in spite of themselves — in spite of the industry they’ve kindled. That may just mean that people have rediscovered their love of the written word beyond email and the web, and that they demand more of the tools that help them consume it.
For anyone looking for a recommendation before you head out shopping for that someone special, I’ll keep it simple. Buy a Kindle. It’s less stupid than the others. Then see if you remember how to read.
Check out this story about a test at Princeton University to replace millions of printed pages with Kindles: http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2009/11/18/pages/7274/
Absolutely. And this underscores my assertion that what the Kindle has inspired is a conversion platform from dead tree to digital more than the perceived utility of a single-function device. Take this paragraph, for example:
“My classmates and I have found the Kindle’s biggest drawback to be the difficulty of annotating. Instead of scrawling in the margins, you must create a note on the Kindle and type in your thoughts using a small keyboard. Not only does it take much longer, but it’s hard to find your notes later on. The Kindle also can be frustratingly slow, lagging when you’re turning the page.”
Even staying in the Kindle ecosystem, I’d FAR rather use the Kindle app on the computer than the Kindle device itself, and these students seem to agree.
Thanks for this analysis…I was wondering what the advantage of the Nook was. Now I realize it’s not much different from the Kindle and I trust your technology advice implicitly.
Question, though. Don’t you think there’s a sustainable market for those folks who aren’t as technologically savvy for whom a Kindle might be a nice bridge into the world of technology? I’m thinking of people who may never buy an iPhone so won’t realize what they’re missing. My mother, for example. Eyesight is also a consideration. I personally don’t like reading on the Kindle for iPhone unless I’m really, really desperate.
Yes. There is absolutely a market for people who aren’t tech savvy. But it’s small, and I don’t believe they will sustain the current crop of e-readers. I get the feeling my iPhone comment might have made me sound like more of a zealot than I am. And I am, don’t get me wrong. Still, I’m with you — I far prefer reading on the Kindle. I love the Kindle. That’s why it’s so annoying. I feel like I’m in a troubled marriage with it. I married because I thought I knew it so well, but alas…
Since I prefer reading on the Kindle over the iPhone, what needs to happen is I need a new Kindle. One that does more, faster. That’s what we can expect to come next, and why I contend that this batch of e-readers will be exceptionally short-lived. In fact, just today, Fusion Garage announced the JooJoo, an Internet Tablet. Large, connected device that will ultimately deliver the kind of functionality I want out of my Kindle right now. Take a look at Gizmodo.com here: http://gizmodo.com/5421614/fusion-garage-joojoo-tablet-hands+on?skyline=true&s=i
What your mother will be reading on will ultimately be a Kindle that does far more than just books, but does books really, really well.
Great analysis Pete. You know how much I L.O.V.E. my Kindle, so of course my opinion will be biased. I just got off a stint of traveling (14 airplanes in less than 3 weeks), and loved its portability and convenience. It is great to be able to purchase books at the moment I get a book recommendation. The function that has been a surprise favorite has been the highlight function. I often mark passages in books that are beautifully written or filled with wisdom. It has been great to go to the notes listing and see all of those passages in one list rather than having to flip back through the book.
Since my company provides my cell phone, our I.T. guy is a Mac-hater, and I am too cheap to get a second cell plan, I will likely never have an iPhone. Thus, it is difficult for me to understand the obsession. At the same time, I cannot imagine trying to read a book like say, Pillars of the Earth, 20 words at a time on an iPhone.
As a humerous note…I found that a Kindle is a great guy magnet (especially going into Christmas season). I couldn’t tell you how many people stopped me to ask how I liked it. There will be some happy wives out there this Christmas.
Yeah, see my comment above on the iPhone reference. You’re not going to have to read on Kindle for the iPhone. It’s coming to the Blackberry, too.
You’re right on about the book-buying experience — that’s a huge plus for me, and in fact it’s brought me back to reading. But I just couldn’t disagree more about the notes functionality. It takes forever and the keyboard is chronic. If I have any sort of thought that’s more than three words, my teeth start to itch.
As for the guy-magnet, I’ll have to reserve judgement until I see whom you’ve actually landed using the Kindle-bait… and take special notice of whether or not they’re wielding coupons.