My nook arrived - here's my review / comments [ Edited ]

[ps56k]

Just thought I would start a different thread - from the rants over on the "shipping" thread -

for those folks that now have their nook delivered...  reviews, comments, observations, tests, etc

Here is one message to start things off....

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 Author: Mike_S76 (New User) Date: 12-08-2009 12:57 PM

I ordered on October 20th. My nook arrived this afternoon. Its up and running, registered, wi-fi configured to my home network and I have already downloaded a book.

Given all reviews out there, I was concerned about a laggy and buggy interface. I was pleasantly surprised on how well it has worked so far. Perhaps I had lowered expectations, but so far its been great and much faster then I thought it would be. Good luck to all those who have nooks on order and are waiting. All I can say is that nook works and I haven't had any bad experience with the device as of yet.

[SerenityCat]

He's had it for an hour.  Can't really give a good review after having something only an hour.  I'd rather that all of you learn your way around the Nook, get to know it well, read a few books on it, find books from other sites and load them to it, go to B&N, see if you can read any books for that 1 hour while you're there, tell us what kind of coupons you got...that sort of thing.  That takes awhile, not 1 hour.

[C8H10N4O2]

1 hour >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 0 Hours in my opinion.

That's why the reviews coming in are considered "initial reviews."

[oceans1]

Thank you Mike_S76. I ( as well as many other here also, I'm sure ) really appreciate you sharing that with us .

[luny2ns]

ps56k, I for one am glad to see your post.  I was really getting discouraged with the negative reviews.  Some of the bad reviews were coming from people that were just trying them in the B&N stores and you had worked with it more extensively than they could have!  Thanks again.  Waiting for word on my nook, due tomorrow but no updates to my Nov. 30th date or e-mails to confirming shipping!

[Mike_S76]

No worries. I also totally agree with everyone about needing time to fully evaluate the device. My only intent was to give some initial impressions when I received it today. Like many others I had concerns about the device's performance. While I am not saying those reviews are unfounded, I did have a much better initial experience then I originally thought.

Here are a few pics for you guys as well:

Nook on Standby

Nook showing my library

[ps56k]

is that your nook resting on a Mac Air ?

[Mike_S76]

It is on top of a 13" Macbook Pro.

[Denker]

Keep in mind that firmware updates have even been coming through in the past couple of days. I found lag in the store on one model and not another because the store I went to had multiple models going off of the same account. Additionally, one review expressed concern about lag which was later fixed with a live update. I don't think it's valid to worry about problems quite yet. Barnes & Noble has already acknowledged and fixed some issues and has already put out a message saying certain advertised features (ie in-store features) are still being set up. 

[mojotogo]

So glad to hear that someone gets to enjoy thier Nook. Still waiting for mine with a Nov. 30th promise date. I hate waiting.

[steve10]

I received mine and in general I'm pleased with it.  The one-page quick start guide is about all you need to get going, and the interface seems reasonably intuitive. 

Attaching to my home wifi was very simple, except for the fact that the cancel button is right below the shift and beside the numeric key, so it took me a few tries to get the password in.  But no big deal.

Ordering books and downloading them was quick and painless.  I will confess that I had purchased the books previously via my laptop, so I can't vouch for the experience of searching for books via the Nook touchscreen.  I did play with it for a few minutes and it seems reasonable.  But I think I would still tend to purchase them via laptop and download.  All previous purchases show up ready to download when you go online.

In the online store, I was surprised to find only 3 newspapers and maybe a half-dozen magazines, since I had the impression they had siggned up quite a few.  But, presumably more will show up in due course.

I've never had an ereader before and for me the e-ink takes a little getting used to, but I think it will be OK and I may end up getting one of those attachable lights I've seen advertised.

My one BIG complaint is something I already expected, only it's worse than expected.  I intend to use the Nook as much or more for reading news articles than reading books, and the lack of ability to categorize them into folders is a drag.  But OK, I knew that before it arrived and went ahead with my purchase.   But incredibly:  (1) the title it gives the PDFs I create is the URL the PDF writer places at the bottom of the page, and (2) while you can do a search on books in the library, there is no search on the documents in My Documents.  Unbelievable.  Barnes and Noble, surely you can do better with document organization than this.   I know I'm not the only one who intends to use the Nook in this fashion.  What good does it do me to see http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/cl... as the title?  Even without subfolders, why not at least display the file name as the name of the document, and search on name or date of the file?  Grr.

Anyway, other that that one MAJOR flaw (hopefully a temporary one) I'm very pleased with the Nook thus far.  Hopefully they'll come out with an upgrade to improve the naming, categorization and search of documents.

[steve10]

A slight correction to what I said below:

Via a USB connection to a computer, you can create subfolders under the My Documents folder, and place files within the folders.  However, it surfaces them in the display as if they are all directly under My Documents, thus really doesn't help.

And, I figured I might get around the issue of the name being the URL from which the PDF was produced by going into Page Setup before printing, and giving it a header and footer with the name I wanted displayed.  However, the URL still comes through in the title, so the URL must be embedded in the PDF somewhere else.

Anyway, I am excited to have my Nook and know I'll get a lot of value out of it.  But I'll get a lot more value if and when they improve on the naming, categorization, and search capabilities on My Documents.

[pantala]

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steve10 wrote:My one BIG complaint is something I already expected, only it's worse than expected.  I intend to use the Nook as much or more for reading news articles than reading books, and the lack of ability to categorize them into folders is a drag.  But OK, I knew that before it arrived and went ahead with my purchase.   But incredibly:  (1) the title it gives the PDFs I create is the URL the PDF writer places at the bottom of the page, and (2) while you can do a search on books in the library, there is no search on the documents in My Documents.  Unbelievable.  Barnes and Noble, surely you can do better with document organization than this.   I know I'm not the only one who intends to use the Nook in this fashion.  What good does it do me to see http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/cl... as the title?  Even without subfolders, why not at least display the file name as the name of the document, and search on name or date of the file?  Grr.

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Are you certain that there is no search in "My Documents"? I have started a separate thread about how the nook segregates non B&N content here:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/eBooks-Help-Board/Hands-on-and-a-major-gripe/m-p/423242#U4232...

The user guide states there you can search through the contents of My Documents, but your hands-on experience seems to tell a different story.

[Chiclitz]

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SerenityCat wrote:

He's had it for an hour.  Can't really give a good review after having something only an hour.  I'd rather that all of you learn your way around the Nook, get to know it well, read a few books on it, find books from other sites and load them to it, go to B&N, see if you can read any books for that 1 hour while you're there, tell us what kind of coupons you got...that sort of thing.  That takes awhile, not 1 hour.

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I take your point that one hour's experience is not the stuff that definitive reviews are based on, but what's with the attitude? "I'd rather that all of you...." You've got a nerve! What, do you work for Amazon?

[cummings66]

She owns a Kindle, don't think she works at Amazon.  I think she's got a Nook on order though.  Probably frazzled by the wait as I am, still waiting on my Nov 30'th ship date...

[SerenityCat]

Yes, I have a Kindle, no I do not work for Amazon, no I do not have a Nook on order.

I am interested in hearing about the Nook as I am any new ereader.  Just because someone has one device doesn't mean they are married to that device.  I'm here to learn as much about the Nook as anyone else.

And it's surprising that you read attitude in that post I wrote.  But let me reword it so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities, (yah, that part was a little attitude):

What I meant was, anything new and shiny straight out of the box is cool.  I would like to hear some reviews after you have all, (and by "you all" I mean those of you who have purchased the Nook...really?  You saw attitude in that?!?!  REALLY?!?), learn your way around the Nook, use it for a few days, do some of the things it has been claimed it can do and then come back and give a report.

I'm not particularly interested in the reports by Endgadget and the like because they didn't really get in to the actual USE of the thing.  Meaning, daily use, reading, loading books from B&N, loading books from other sites, the ease of it all, using it in the store, lending, that sort of thing.  I want to know how easy all of that is, are there any issues with any of it, does it do what it has been claimed to do, are there issues that need to be worked on, etc.

Again, you can hardly make that sort of review on a product you've just pulled out of the box an hour ago.  Funny that the person who made that review understood what I meant and you saw attitude and accused me of working for Amazon.  Says quite a bit about you.

[steve10]

Yeah, unfortunately so.  The choices on the touchscreen at that point include only the following:

View My B&N Library (which returns to the library where the books are)

Check for new content

Open Audio Player

The user guide also makes the claim that you can search, filter, etc the list of documents, but it's not there.  I've tried the search and filtering on the My Library and it does not return anything in My Documents.

I have to believe this is an area they'll get a lot of feedback on.  I saw a number of people in the other message threads that wanted to use it as much for documents as books.

I'm still enjoying the experience of what it does do, while waiting in hope of some improvements in the not too distant future.  I'll probably keep a separate folder of old documents and just keep the unread ones ones in My Documents.

[steve10]

I did find a potential workaround for the odd naming convention on PDFs.  It really isn't the Nook that is determining the name, per se.  Apparently every application that prints a PDF embeds an internal name separate from the file name, and it's that internal name the Nook is showing.  The browser is creating the URL-based internal name.  If I copy and paste the content into Word, save it under "ABC 123", and then print the PDF, it embeds "Microsoft Word - ABC 123" as the internal name.  It's a bit of a pain but what can you do.  But I did want to stand corrected that it really isn't the Nook's fault that the name is what it is.  However, it would be nice to allow an option to look at the file name rather than the internal name.

[jfisher]

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SerenityCat wrote:

What I meant was, anything new and shiny straight out of the box is cool.  I would like to hear some reviews after you have all, (and by "you all" I mean those of you who have purchased the Nook...really?  You saw attitude in that?!?!  REALLY?!?), learn your way around the Nook, use it for a few days, do some of the things it has been claimed it can do and then come back and give a report.

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SerenityCat,

I think maybe people took offense because it seems like you are demanding that all new nook owners refrain from posting their initial impressions to wait until they have had the device for longer.  True, that would yield a better review, and I think we all look forward to more feedback of that sort, but for right now a few hours use is all anyone can comment on.  I, for one, am really interested to find out what new users have to say NOW so I can find out more about the nook (I have one on order for January).  We'll learn more information as it comes, but there's no harm in people posting a quick review now for those of us who are interested.  So instead of requesting that we stop these early reviews, maybe it would be more time-effective for you to wait a day or so when there's even the possibility of a substantial review being posted.

[nfdg03]

I agree with SerenityCat that to get a full review of all the features of the nook we will need to wait a few weeks after they have been in our hands, at which time those users will have a better understanding of the true "reading experience" of the nook. 

But given that people have only just started to get their nooks today, I am pleased to hear everyones initial thoughts and impressions.  If SerenityCat only wants to hear what people think in a week or 2, then she should probably wait a week or 2 until she reads or comments on any of the reviews.

I for one appreciate the early impressions that people are giving (heck, I even gave my early impressions after trying a nook at my local B&N.)

BTW - for those of you that have begun to play with their nooks, has anyone tried sideloading a public library Overdrive book via Adobe Digital Editions?  I am very curious to see if anyone has been able to test this functionality yet - please let me know - thanks!