Galen at Tracy, CA Barnes & Noble asked if I wanted to play with the extra Color Nook he had in the back room. I practically jumped out of my seat! YES!
Not having my trusty 5 year old Toshiba laptop with me, or my good camera, I played with it for about an hour and took pictures with my HTC Aria cell phone. Any detailed notes were left to memory, which lately (see ForCarol.com) has been scattered at best.
Compare Nooks
Original Nook
I have the original e-reader Nook and have read several books on it (currently reading “The Pawn” on it) and am very happy with it (minus the one incident when it froze on me..see my solution). I can read for a very long time without strain, flipping the pages is easy, using the Internet sucks (so I don’t use it). I have music on there that I don’t use, but, it is ok, and shopping for new books is easy. Occasionally, I try to use the big screen as a touch pad….that does not work. It is pretty slow.
Color Nook
A MAJOR step up in technology, but, I am not sure reading a book for hours is going to be comfortable. Magazines, Newspapers (NewsNookers?), Childrens Books (I am told, but, did not experience the interactivity on this Color Nook (technical issues?), but, I am hoping it will be like the old, absolutely stupendous, Broderbund Books (“Grandma and Me” by Mercer Mayer, for example) on the Mac that Kristen (now 19 and a Freshman at the University of the Pacific) grew up with)). Can’t wait to see the new way in action….
With the Color Nook I surfed the Internet. It was not as fast as my computer, but, it was 1000% better than before. I watched videos, and just browsed sites (like my old reliable CNN.com).
I then browsed a couple of stored books ( looked nice, but, did not test it for long term reading…it is a back-lit computer screen after all), and Magazine. OK….THIS is awesome. Magazines are vivid. Full of color, the page design is appealing, lots of pictures, diagrams, graphs…etc. Here are some shots from National Geographic and Popular Science (I subscribe to both, NG since…..yeah, I’m old….1972 !) back when you had to be nominated to get it.
For fun, I took a picture of the Popular Science edition I have at home…paper. See how paper compares to the Color Nook (same HTC Aria phone).
Summary
Not sure how the Color Nook will be for long time reading of a book, but, for the short term stuff (Kids books, Magazines, Newspapers, the Internet, Videos, etc) it is excellent!
The Color Nook is a quantum leap in technology from Nook #1 and when content that takes advantage of it’s capabilities, this device (and, to be fair, others like it), the use of these kinds of devices will be hard to resist.
TracyReaderDad: Book Reviews 