So, just yesterday the tech community started freaking out (in a good way) about Barnes and Noble’s new eReader – the nook.
There’s a lot to be excited about. It has the e-ink technology. The basic idea behind e-ink is that it interacts with yours eyes like reading text off of a page. I’ve seen this on a Kindle 2, and it’s pretty amazing. The Nook is priced comparably to the Kindle 2 – and the technical specs are very similar. However, Barnes and Noble’s execs want you to know that there are some important differences. Here are some of my favorite differences.
Native PDF support
It’s got a PDF reader. Awesome. This is what I need in order to turn an eReader into the most excellent portable philosophy library. Grab PDFs from all of the top journals, and I’m good to go.
MicroSD
You can put a 16GB microSD in this thing. I triple-dog dare you to try and max that out with philosophy journal articles.
LCD Screen
You don’t get the physical keyboard that comes with the Kindle, but you get a context sensitive screen that will have a virtual keyboard. Things that you would want a fast touch screen for happen in the LCD screen. Things that you’d want the eInk screen for happen in the eInk screen.
Free Public Domain Books
I noted earlier that the Plastic Logic partnership with Google and Barnes and Noble’s was serious trouble for Amazon. This is a large part of the reason why. There’s a lot of old, free philosophy to be digested on the Nook
Open
It freaking runs Android! Score one for the open source software community. It also supports ePub – the standard, open format for eBooks.
WiFi and Android Apps
I don’t want to use this thing as a computer, but WiFi with some limited android browsing capability should make reading philosophy blogs and some other daily lightweight web routines awesome. (Note: I have yet to verify how much android app functionality there will be. Some of this is speculation.)
Those are some of the goodies. The things that should get philosophers excited is that this device would enable to build an enormous library of philosophy journal articles (and public domain history books) that you can have with you at all times. Because of the built in PDF reader, you could read the journal articles in their original form. Because it’s eInk, it will have that good old-fashioned feel of reading paper. The next feature I want to talk about makes this thing even cooler.
I want my eReader to have excellent annotation/highlighting/note taking ability.
Here’s the fact sheet on the Nook from Barnes and Noble’s. From the fact sheet I gather that there is a virtual keyboard for annotations (update: screen shot here), and annotations/highlights can be synced! (If you download their eReader software)
I have a few concerns/questions. First, syncing annotations won’t be available to Linux users until Barnes and Noble’s allows their eReader to run on Linux. I gather this should be easy to do. The eReader is evidently a slightly-tweaked clone of an open eReader software that does run on Linux. Second, I’d like to know exactly how the annotation works. Right now I have a lot of unanswered questions. Can you annotate any document that you’re viewing (e.g. PDFs that you put on it) or is this feature limited to eBooks? If you can annotate PDFs, do those sync and can they be shared with other people?
The nook seems awesome as far as readers go. For philosophers, there’s a lot to love. Even without knowing precisely how good the annotation functionality is, it’s looking like a killer tool to add to your philosophers’ toolkit. If the annotation functionality is all that I hope it will be, then I’d file The Nook under must have.
Now I just need to find someone to buy me one.
Great review. (A great review that came out a day after I bought a Sony Reader… Actually, I’m quite happy with it, but the Nook looks pretty sweet.)
Clayton,
Return it. OK maybe don’t do something that drastic.
But when I get one of these things – I’ll be looking for other philosophers to help collaboratively build awesome philosophy library (within fair use guidelines). I know that’s something you’d be down for.
Are you so sure it’ll be that great? Think of how those PDFs will work on a 6″ screen. Not so well, I’m betting. Will the nook be able to zoom a PDF? The Kindle DX can’t. Even if it did, would you really want to have to scroll around on a screen that doesn’t refresh fast enough to scroll?
I’d say it’s far too early to be getting all excited about it.
I have a Kindle 2 with some 600 books on it. That pushes the ability of the device to manage my books. All indications are that it will be significantly *worse* on the Nook — but again, that is preliminary information.
Hey John,
That’s a very good point. When I played around with a Kindle 2 (briefly) I was thinking that a PDF would be fine on it – however, I decided to try and guesstimate what PDFs would look like.
I posted the results in a new post here – http://www.andrewcullison.com/2009/10/will-the-nook-pdf-capability-be-good-enough-for-academics/
Short Version: You’re right. We shouldn’t be so confident that PDFs will be that good on a 6″ screen.
I’m going to try and test it out when I can get my hands on one of these things, but I may be holding out for the que reader.
pdfs are fine on the nook. occasionally text doesnt wrap properly and the result will look like you have pasted unformatted text into a word doc so there are spaces and gaps. not ideal but not a nuisance either. the REAL PROBLEM is that the software has crippled pdf features. nook will not allow you to highlight, bookmark pages, notate or look-up words in pdf formatted documents. seriously?! i mean wtf?! the nook is neat but these crippled features are dealbreakers and it goes back. am gonna buy a sony which doesnt have these limitations.
I can search words in PDF documents on the Nook. Maybe you were trying it out with an older PDF that was just an image file. But for most journal PDFs that were typeset within the last 15 years…you should be able to search for words on the nook.
The lack of highlighting/notation in native PDF documents is annoying – but it’s not a deal breaker for me. At least I’m willing to give it a few more firmware upgrades before it upsets me.
I think part of the reason I’m not that upset about notation/highlighting is that I don’t like the highlighting/notation function in any of the devices (Kindle/Sony) enough to use them for serious research anyway.
Notation/Highlighting is a little slow/clunky/awkward for me on all the devices I’ve tried. Until they have some really awesome dual eink screens with touchscreen overlay – I doubt I’ll be satisfied with any notation/highlighting solution.
I agree. Having the ability to annotate PDF files is a must for contemporary students. I mainly use journals so having a good e-reader with annotation ability is something that is of interest to me. Why can’t one product just get these simple things right, is it really that difficult for a tablet device to be able to cope with opening PDF files while also providing the ability to annotate them? Can the Nook, Kindle, or iPad handle these, which one is best?