The NOOK!

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. ~Ruth Ann Schabacker

I'd had a couple of things I'd planned on blogging about today. The huge storm that dumped about a foot of snow on us, for one:




In DH's words, "Now THAT is a snowstorm!"

Yep, he was excited. Partly because he could do this in the yard:

Ready... Set....


GO!!!!!


But then, UPS arrived and changed all my plans. The wonderful man brought me this (I almost kissed him, but he wasn't my regular guy and probably wouldn't have understood, lol):



Yep (squeee...) THAT is my Christmas gift to myself: The Nook eReader!

I've wanted an eReader for a few years now, but just couldn't find one I liked. Pre-Kindle, there was Sony, but they were expensive and I just wasn't in love with them. After buying the three we gave away for the LASR/WC anniversary I decided, again, that I wasn't willing to spend the $300 for them (the wireless one they're coming out with next month is $400). It didn't help their standing with me when I couldn't get the Sony eReaders to talk to my computer. I couldn't even charge them up and finally had to send them to Judy to see if SHE could get them to work. She did, but not without great effort. AND it took forever to upload books onto them from the computer.

So... I scratched Sony off the list.

Kindle was tempting... so very tempting. It really did everything I wanted, but I just couldn't get past the fact that I had to buy my books from Amazon. Yeah, it's cool for them that they kept it all in house, and the prices was right on both the eReaders AND the books. But I'm stubborn, and don't like being told I can't do something (like buy books from the publisher or from Fictionwise), and I didn't like the fact I wouldn't be able to load up all the PDFs I've purchased over the past three years. I've heard that software exists to allow you to do all of that, but it annoyed me that I'd have to jump through hoops for it.

So... despite the very real temptation, I scratched Kindle off the list.

Then, Barnes and Noble came out with the Nook. They sent me an email on the first day they were accepting pre-orders for it. To be honest, I really hadn't heard that much about them, but from their email information I became intrigued enough to do a lot of research. First, I checked out my pet peeve about the Kindle. Did the Nook let me upload PDF files?

YES! It did, and without any problems at all.

And, after finding a comparison of the products on some technical website, I discovered that it pretty much had everything the Kindle did (except text to speech and I think the Kindle battery lasts a little longer, but the Nook has more memory space automatically -- I liked more memory -- AND I can buy extra memory for a very reasonable price if I need it), was the same price as Kindle ($259) and it let me upload not just PDFs and ePub documents, but it's also an mp3 player to boot.

Yeah, baby. I was sold and I placed my order that day. That turned out to be a good thing, since the Nook ended up having the same problem as the Kindle did when it was first released -- demand was far higher than supply. Thankfully, since I'd placed my order so early, I was in the group first in line to receive one.

Yes, I played with it a little last night. Here's what I found:

First -- unlike Sony, the Nook comes with an AC adapter for free. This meant I could charge it that way, and wasn't locked into using my computer. However, because of my bad experience with the Sony eReader, I plugged the Nook into the wall with the adapter AND into my computer. It worked flawlessly both ways.

Good start.

Next, after it charged for about 2 1/2 hours, I started it up and took the tour they have. It told me all the cool stuff it does and I was even more excited. I logged into the BN.com site and linked my Nook to my account. Everything is still going smoothly.

Now, to test their claim that I can read my PDF files. It doesn't tell you HOW to load them up -- and while I realize this may have a been a no-brainer for a lot of folks, it took me a little bit to realize that I had to plug my Nook into my computer where it because a sort of travel drive. From that point it was simply a matter of copying and pasting my PDFs into the new file. It took about 20 seconds to copy over a couple dozen books (again, unlike the Sony which took forever for each book upload -- sorry Sony, but you keep having strikes against you).

Okay -- PDFs loaded up, let me see if I can (1) Find them and (2) Read them.

Tap the screen, tap my documents and VOILA! All of my PDFs are there. BUT... for some reason, some of them didn't show up with their title. I had a couple that were stored under the first line of the story, others that were the title and I even had one that was saved under the author's name. Odd. And I can't figure out how to fix that, because the files are all saved by name on my computer and that was how I copied them over ... my guess is that it has to do with how the story was formatted by the publisher. Also, the covers are in black and white, and don't show up in the "covers" link on the Nook. Those were both small issues, and the fact remained that I could still access the books I've purchased in the past.

Okay, I opened one PDF. It appears as though the Nook coverts them to a Word document (this is supposition on my part, so don't quote me on it). That was fine, and it was perfectly formatted and easy to read. I can change the text font (to one of three choices) and the size (small, medium, large).

I'm still happy. So far, it's still all good.

Next I had to test how buying a book from BN.com worked. Was it simple to buy it and get it to my Nook?

I logged into to BN.com and chose a book. The "buy" button said "Buy now, read in seconds" and they weren't kidding. I clicked, it charged my credit card and sent the document to my Nook before I could take a second breath.

I went to the Nook, tapped the screen, tapped "check for new BN content" and VOILA!! The book was there and ready to read.

Be still my heart.

Buying books this easily can be very, very dangerous.

The only thing I don't like about the Nook so far is that I can't put it in its cover, hold it to read and turn the pages easily. The little arrow to turn the page is too far up on the reader for my thumb to reach. I either have to take it out of the cover, or shift my hands to use my finger. I think I can live with that, though, if that's the only downfall.

So, on a scale of 1 - 10, the Nook gets a 9.5 from me.

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You Are Chemistry

Of all the types, you are the most "mad scientist." You love to really get to the essence of how things work. You are also a total brainiac and good at crunching out equations. You are very detail oriented. You understand concepts and theories well. You are capable of very abstract thought. You are inventive and creative. You might create a drug to make everyone smarter or come up with a totally new food flavor!

What Field of Science Are You?

Maybe I could invent negative calorie chocolate!

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