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Barnes & Noble unveils its Kindle killer, the Nook
This afternoon Barnes & Noble unveiled its answer to Amazon's Kindle, the $259 Nook, which goes on sale at the end of November, but is now up for preorder at nook.com. One-upping its competition, Nook adds a small full-color touch/horizontal scrollable navigation LCD that displays book cover art underneath the now de rigeuer 16-gray scale E Ink e-paper screen.
The touchscreen also displays standard content lists and a pop-up touch keypad. The screen goes dark so you're not distracted while reading.
To combat Kindle, Barnes & Noble couldn't intro a "me-too" e-reader. "Following the leader is simply not in our DNA," said William Lynch, president of B&N's online division. Inside Nook is 2GB of memory, which will hold 1,700 e-books, supplemented by a microSD slot. Nook also has an MP3 player and picture viewer (or as much as a 16-gray scale screen can render a picture) and can display side-loaded Adobe PDFs.
The Nook-to-Nook feature lets you lend e-books to other Nook owners or to anyone with a Barnes & Noble-enabled device, for up to 14 days. While the e-book is lent out, the owner doesn't have access to it, just like a physical book. To bribe you into the Nook, the first 10,000 Nook buyers will get a free e-copy of The Tipping Point. Author Malcolm Gladwell showed up to read from the opening chapter.
Nook is the first e-reader (but not be the last) with both 3G (via AT&T) and Wi-Fi for downloading content and exclusive streamed content inside B&N retail stores. It also runs Android, which potentially opens up the device for all manner of third-party app development.
Nook is just one weapon in B&N's war against the Kindle. Not only will Nook enable access to more than a million e-books (Amazon has less than half as many), magazines and newspapers, from both its own online store, it can also access free public-domain titles from Google Books, and Fictionwise.
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By Al at 5:17 PM ON 10/20/09
The side loaded adobe pdf option is a definite attraction. One of my chief complaints against the Kindle is that it only sees its own ebooks and gives no option to read your own accumulated pdf library.
By Randy at 6:55 PM ON 10/20/09
I'll wait for it to be released and get some hands on reviews (maybe watch a youtube vid review), but it looks like a kindle killer inho.
Honestly, who wants to use a device of similar quality, but the company can snatch your content from you? *%^# kindle
By murc at 7:36 PM ON 10/20/09
I'm not really a book kind of guy, I like magazines.
So I'm holding out for color e-ink.
that said, this things looks far more impressive then the kindle.
By Ronald Stepp at 8:29 PM ON 10/20/09
Darn, I was hoping from the 1st image in the aritcle, that that was actual size, but later pictures destroyed my delusion.
By Ski at 8:30 PM ON 10/20/09
My wife and I live and cruise aboard our sailboat. Ebook readers are GREAT space savers. She has a Sony and we like it, but can't share books with others. The new "share" feature MAKES IT!
I just Pre-Ordered one.
Ski
By Phogo at 10:17 PM ON 10/20/09
Pre ordered. Sorry Amazon you played your 1984 card way to many times (non replaceable battery, no memory slot, no open format and you steal people's books).
By helluva at 6:48 AM ON 10/21/09
uuggh. Why does Dvice thinks eReader's are so cool? I swear 40% of the posts on this site are about the "latest and great ereader". Who cares? It's a digital version of one of the oldest forms of entertainment. It's not exactly groundbreaking, LET IT GO.
By hsnopi at 4:01 PM ON 10/21/09
what I don't understand is the 9.99 price tag. it is in electronic format before they publish it. all they do is click run on a program and it's available in ereader format. if I buy Fulgrim for 7.99, or any paperback for that price, why would i pay more for an ebook? after say 10 books I have payed more then 20$ extra. I read more then 10 books a year.
By whatsup at 11:36 PM ON 10/21/09
I have the Kindle 1 version, and the B&N Nook looks to combine the benefits of Kindle 1's expandable memory and replaceable battery with the Kindle 2's better E Ink screen and smaller footprint, the Foxit Ereader;s ability to read native .PDF files, and Sony's Reader's ability to read EPUB files (though Sony doesn't actually own that format any more than Foxit owns the .PDF format) and then throws in the additional benefits of a color touchscreen interface and book sharing.
That being said, however, the e-book pricing at Amazon for NON-Best Sellers looks overall to be less expensive than B&N. And several retail sights, such as Fictionwise, Baen, and many others offer multi-format e-book purchases at even cheaper prices, both with and without DRM attached, so you don't need to worry about being tied down to a particular piece of hardware when purchasing a book (only once!) from them.
I am wondering what the yet-to-be-released Apple Tablet will have on all of this.
By Kevin87 at 2:07 AM ON 10/26/09
it looks better than Kindle, and has a better name ("Nook book", cute lol), but I will NEVER use any of these e-book type things. it takes the whole point out of books, i like the texture, the look, the smell of real books. plus, if i'm reading a book, the point is to NOT be looking at a computer screen.
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Kevin87:
it looks better than Kindle, and has a better name ("Nook book", cute lol), but I will NEVER use any of these e-boo...More »