Friday, December 10, 2010

Pogue reviews color Nook

David Pogue, my ol' pal and NYT tech journalist, review the color Nook in a video on this page.  But you can view it in much better quality via iTunes.
(Hint: he likes it a ton better than the old B/W one, as I'd suspected.)

There's also an accompanying article with more detail.

I reeeeeeaaally wonder when Amazon, if ever, plans to introduce a color Kindle. I don't think they can keep their position without one.

6 comments:

Bruce said...

Credit the Amazon Kindle with jump-starting the tablet market. They were there ahead of anybody else. The Kindle is a useful, functional device for many people.

I think the future will see two kinds of tablets. One, a general purpose tablet that people buy, like the iPad. Amazon can sell books on these tablets by making sure their Bookstore app is available for them.

The other kind of tablet is like the one Amazon is making today - the single purpose book reader. I don't think this will go away. However, I do think that these will eventually be given away for free.

I think Amazon is right to keep the price low and not try to compete with the iPad. Sooner or later they will have a deal where the Kindle is free if you buy 10 books for it. I think that's the direction they have to go in order to survive.

So, to me, Barnes and Noble is the one making a mistake here by adding too many features and too much cost to the Nook.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

You have some good points.
And I also think the Kindle will become free at some point. (In a store, Currys, right in my neighborhood here in UK, you can get a laptop for free with a broadband contract!).

I would only add that a dedicated, simple reader need not exclude a screen with good contrast, or even color.

And as things get cheaper, I suspect that the division between simple reader and tablet may blur. For example, can you buy a mobile phone now which can *only* make phone calls?

Bruce said...

Good point about free laptops offered by phone carriers. That happens from time to time with Netbooks in the USA. Of course you end up paying a thousand dollars or more in data access fees...

I was thinking more along the lines of the el cheapo calculator (wrapped in plastic) that fell out of a box of breakfast cereal while I was pouring into a bowl. This happened maybe five years after the first HP and TI portable calculators.

These days, a book reader would at least need WiFi so the bookseller giving it away could make some money back.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, I don't think an ereader has any elements which can't become exceedingly cheap over the next few years.

Stephen A said...

I have a rooted color nook and love it to pieces! It's the best tablet/e-book reader I've ever had. My Archos 5 Internet Tablet still gets a lot of play due to the fact that it is always omnipresent. (I've been fiddling w/ tablets for ebook readers since the Palm pilot and have a plethora of tablets).

Both decent e-book readers and tablets will be cheap (<$50) to free in a year. I purchased a Maylong-150 android tablet for $99 from Walgreens recently. While not as spectacular as the color nook it is a perfectly good ebook reader which runs all android readers:aldiko, nook, kindle, and Borders, etc. as well as browsing and all the other functions of android. The Indian government has demoed a tablet with comparable capability for $35 with the aim to drive the price to $10-20. MIT Media Lab's OLPC program is targeting the $50 price point.

My prediction is that $50 android tablets will be ubiquitous by next year with free units available from cell providers and bookstores. This will change things radically both due to their omnipresence but also due to thecuse of multiple tablets at a time.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks. I have quoted you in a new post.

I guess "rooting" is taking over the control from B&N's operating system?
And I guess that's not for gramma esther?

I am guessing the Nook is quite similar to my Galaxy Tab (except the GT is not software-neutered). I like the GT a lot, I think I'd use it more than my iPad if not for the fact that I work from home, so the weight of the iPad is not so much of an issue.