On Friday, I posted that I was switching to Amazon’s Kindle eReader. Almost a year ago, I got Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and have raved about it. So when I said I’d decided to switch, quite a few people asked what the deal was. I figured it’d be easiest to answer with a post.
When the eReader craze began, I got very exited. I’m a pretty big tech geek and I love love love to read, so the marriage of the two was a match made in heaven for me. I gravitated immediately towards the Nook. Why? The two machines were pretty much identical, feature-for-feature and I have been in love with Barnes & Noble since I was a kid. (The three-story BN bookstore on Kansas City’s Plaza is a bibliophile’s heaven. No exaggeration). And because BN has physical stores, they offered a few nifty extras if you brought your Nook into the store. So in August last year, I went into the BN down the street and got my device.
Because the Nook only has a touch-screen interface, it’s pretty tedious to highlight. It’s even more tedious to add notes – first bringing up the menu, then searching through and scrolling to the line and word. All on a touchscreen that lags. It’s not a pleasant experience, and I’ve often found myself wondering if I really need to highlight that as badly as I thought I did. Is that thought I had really brilliant enough to go to the trouble of typing it out?
Because the other major flaw in the Nook’s note-taking system is that there’s no way to export my highlights and notes. Once I’ve finished N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, the only way to get the bits of the book I want to interact with further is by clicking back through, page by page, watching for annotations. This is awful.
Not only does the Kindle have a real keyboard – which will make typing notes much easier, it also lets you export those notes and highlights into a text file. This will make writing book reports infinitely easier. And in addition to all of this, Amazon’s latest firmware update added social media sharing. When I find a quote I especially enjoy or want to discuss, I can post it immediately to facebook or twitter. There’s even talk of a virtual café experience developing – when you read a book, you’ll be able to see what your friends have highlighted or noted. What about people we admire? I’d pay a couple of buck to have N. T. Wright’s off-the-cuff commentary on the new book I’m reading.
In short, Kindle and Nook are practically the same machine. Were it not for the Nook’s singular limitation when it comes to notating, I’d stick with it. But since that is the main reason I wanted an eReader in the first place, I’m hopping ship to Amazon’s Kindle.
When the eReader craze began, I got very exited. I’m a pretty big tech geek and I love love love to read, so the marriage of the two was a match made in heaven for me. I gravitated immediately towards the Nook. Why? The two machines were pretty much identical, feature-for-feature and I have been in love with Barnes & Noble since I was a kid. (The three-story BN bookstore on Kansas City’s Plaza is a bibliophile’s heaven. No exaggeration). And because BN has physical stores, they offered a few nifty extras if you brought your Nook into the store. So in August last year, I went into the BN down the street and got my device.I love the Nook. It’s wonderful to read and the menus are easy and pretty intuitive (especially on that nifty color touch screen).
I loaded quite a few books on there immediately and there’re tons of cheap and free books available online – my eLibrary is getting closed to rivaling my physical collection. The software is a bit slow but I haven’t noticed many glitches and the battery lasts 4-5 days when I’m reading heavily. It’s certainly more than paid for itself in the 10 months I’ve owned it, given how much cheaper eBooks are. All in all, I have been very happy with it.Except for its note-taking feature. It’s this one gaping hole that’s motivated my switch over to the Kindle.
Because the Nook only has a touch-screen interface, it’s pretty tedious to highlight. It’s even more tedious to add notes – first bringing up the menu, then searching through and scrolling to the line and word. All on a touchscreen that lags. It’s not a pleasant experience, and I’ve often found myself wondering if I really need to highlight that as badly as I thought I did. Is that thought I had really brilliant enough to go to the trouble of typing it out?Because the other major flaw in the Nook’s note-taking system is that there’s no way to export my highlights and notes. Once I’ve finished N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, the only way to get the bits of the book I want to interact with further is by clicking back through, page by page, watching for annotations. This is awful.
The main reason I bought an eReader was to consolidate my library, to make all my books – and especially my notes – more searchable. Nook doesn’t do this. Kindle does.
Not only does the Kindle have a real keyboard – which will make typing notes much easier, it also lets you export those notes and highlights into a text file. This will make writing book reports infinitely easier. And in addition to all of this, Amazon’s latest firmware update added social media sharing. When I find a quote I especially enjoy or want to discuss, I can post it immediately to facebook or twitter. There’s even talk of a virtual café experience developing – when you read a book, you’ll be able to see what your friends have highlighted or noted. What about people we admire? I’d pay a couple of buck to have N. T. Wright’s off-the-cuff commentary on the new book I’m reading.In short, Kindle and Nook are practically the same machine. Were it not for the Nook’s singular limitation when it comes to notating, I’d stick with it. But since that is the main reason I wanted an eReader in the first place, I’m hopping ship to Amazon’s Kindle.
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