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BLOG: Good Morning Silicon Valley: Nook takes its knocks in second round of reviews [San Jose Mercury News, Calif.]
(San Jose Mercury News (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 10--Maybe it's a good thing Barnes & Noble ran into trouble getting its new Nook e-book reader into the hands of consumers in time for the holidays. From the sound of the latest reviews (see "OK, class, turn in your Nook reports [http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2009/12/ok-class-turn-in-your-nook-reports.
html]"), the gadget exhibits enough Version 1.0 drawbacks to dampen the joy of anyone who unwraps one. A sampling:
--Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal [http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20091209/nook-e-reader-has-potential-but-needs-work/]: "During my tests, I found the Nook slower, more cumbersome to use and less polished than the [Amazon] Kindle. I ran into various crashes and bugs. And, while the Kindle's navigation system isn't exactly world class, it ran circles around the Nook's, despite the great possibilities offered by the latter's use of the touch screen. ... The Nook may be wonderful one day, but, as of today, it's no match for the Kindle, despite advantages such as lending, because it's more annoying to use."
--David Pogue, New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10pogue.html]: "In the electronics business, Greed-Borne Insanity is contagious. That's when electronics executives, blinded by dollar signs on their corneas, rush a product to market before it's ready. ... Unfortunately, we, the salivating public, might be afflicted with a little holiday disease of our own: Sucker Syndrome. Every one of the Nook's vaunted distinctions comes fraught with buzz kill footnotes. ... The touch screen is balky and nonresponsive, even for the Nook product manager who demonstrated it for me. The only thing slower than the color strip is the main screen above it. Even though it's exactly the same E Ink technology that the Kindle and Sony Readers use, the Nook's screen is achingly slower than the Kindle's. ... Missing features are symptoms of B&N's bad case of Ship-at-All-Costs-itis. But the biggest one of all is the Nook's half-baked software. To use the technical term, it's slower than an anesthetized slug in winter."
--Peter Svensson, Associated Press [http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_13960791]: "I've been trying Barnes & Noble Inc.'s $259 Nook for a few days, and I'm not eager to prolong the acquaintance. Some of its problems are specific to the Nook, but most of them have to do with the screen technology the industry has settled on. ... E-ink screens are very cumbersome to navigate. If you have a list of 10 books in your library, and your selection is marked by a highlight, it takes a second for that highlight to travel to a new selection. To users accustomed to the instant responses of computers and phones, this is what hell feels like. ... There are numerous other problems with the interface, but Barnes & Noble says it's fixing a lot of them with a software update next week, so I won't dwell on the subject."
--Edward C. Baig, USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2009-12-10-baig10_ST_N.htm]: "Kindle is atop what is still an infant market. The Nook invites inevitable comparisons to the market leader, and in some areas surpasses Kindle. But, in other important ways, it's subpar: It takes too long to open books, flip pages and change fonts and text size. ... Nook is a promising newcomer with pizazz but also too many bugs and torn pages."
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Copyright (c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
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