\n\nMy biggest problem with the Kindle is its lousy industrial design. The keyboard is just icky. Indeed, the chief attraction of Sony's book reader over the Kindle is that the Sony product doesn't look like ass. Industrial design, alone, may give the Nook a shot in the marketplace.\n\nAnother thing which may help the Nook is that -- on release -- it's boasting a bigger library than the Kindle, the ability to loan books (which gives the Nook network effects the Kindle simply lacks), significantly better features (Wifi, direct PDF viewing, MiniSD slot), and a huge library of free books. It's actually pretty impressive that the Nook offers a (roughly 3x*) bigger library than its more established competitor -- maybe BN has finally figured out how to use its potential market clout.\n
Post Script: * BN's arithmetic looks highly suspect. While Barnes & Noble claims that the Nook has a 500,000 free titles available and the Kindle does not, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the Kindle wouldn't be able to access those books. Also, while BN is claiming to offer a larger library of eBooks than Amazon, it's very hard to verify this -- searching the books available for the Kindle from a given author seems almost invariably to yield more hits than searching BN's eBooks. It may be that BN will release more books when the Nook ships, or that their search function is broken, or that they're simply lying. We shall see (or perhaps others will and I won't, since I have no plans to buy either product).\n\nBN has also, as yet, offered scant details on the licensing scheme. E.g. how many Nooks can access a title from a single account at once? Can you read a book on your Mac while your wife reads the same book on her Nook?\nMy usual objections to book readers hold. They're one more damned thing to carry around and charge (but the Nook, at least, is smaller than the Kindle), and they're one trick ponies. A good general-purpose tablet will eat their lunches. So, I'm not in the market for an electronic book reader right now, but if I were I'd buy pre-order a Nook.\n\nAs for whether the Kindle will continue to rule -- I have my doubts. The only real lock-in Amazon has are the books themselves, and unlike music or apps, we don't tend to read most books over and over. The Kindle has no network effect since it has no mechanism for sharing books (a stupid and much complained-about oversight). So, I just don't see any reason why a Kindle early-adopter wouldn't switch, or why a family with one Kindle in it wouldn't buy a Nook instead of a second Kindle.\n\nSo -- the Nook seems to have a shot, but based on BN's inability to sell me a book in its physical store cheaper than Amazon can ship it to me, I have my doubts that they can execute.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T09:24:23.502+00:00",path:"nook-vs-kindle",_created:"2024-07-09T20:31:53.193Z",id:"1828",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:31:53.193Z","$id":"1828",_path:"post/path=nook-vs-kindle"},"page/path=blog":{path:"blog",css:"",imageUrl:"",prefetch:[{regexp:"^\\/(([\\w\\d]+\\/)*)([\\w-]+)\\/?$",path:"post/path=[3]"}],tags:["public"],source:"