Remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted about the Sony Daily Edition showing up at Best Buy well ahead of the released date?

The website was showing it as backordered but if you clicked on the “check stores” link several stores across the country were showing it as in-stock—a lot of people went out and bought one. In most cases reported, the units were not out on the floor. Best Buy employees had to get them from the “storage room”.

Filed under: News, Sony | Tags: best buy, prs-950 | 10 Comments »

Later this fall Best Buy will start selling the Amazon Kindle alongside the Nook, Sony Readers, and other ebook readers.

Best Buy plans to add new end-caps that display all the major ereaders side-by-side so that consumers can easily compare them.

“There’s no question that e-readers have found their rightful place in today’s digital lifestyle,” said Chris Homeister, senior vice president and general manager of Home Entertainment for Best Buy. “Our goal is to help people choose the device that’s right for them by providing the broadest selection of popular e-readers of any retailer, in one convenient place that enables people to easily see, touch, try and buy.”

This is another huge move by Amazon. They’ve already got the Kindle in Target stores and announced a couple of weeks ago that Staples would start selling Kindles later this fall. That makes 3 major retailers across the US that will now sell a product that has been online-only since the Kindle first launched in 2007.

Filed under: Amazon Kindle, News | Tags: best buy | No Comments »

That was quick. Apparently Engadget had it right. This morning Best Buy has the new Nook WiFi-only available for pre-order on their website.

Looking at the specs, the Nook WiFi appears to share all the same characteristics and features as the original Nook, just not the 3G. It has 2GB of internal memory, a microSD card slot, and supports PDF, EPUB, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDB and MP3 formats. It has a 6-inch E Ink screen and a 3.5-inch color touchscreen below that for navigation.

The estimated arrival date shown on Best Buy is 6/28-7/3/2010 if ordered now, not sure if that’s correct or the default.

Additionally, the regular Nook is now priced at just $199 at Best Buy. But it is currently still listed at $259 from B&N’s website.

And there’s also no mention of any of this on Barnes and Noble’s website, so it seems that Best Buy may be jumping the gun a little.

$149 for a Nook! That really is an outstanding deal considering all the advanced features that is has. The Kobo eReader and Sony PRS-300, both priced in the same area, are going to have a lot harder time now. And it’ll be interesting to see how Amazon responds to one of their biggest competitors beating them to a $149 ebook reader.

Update: B&N issued a press release making all this official. And they did confirm that the regular Nook will now sell for $199. Barnes and Noble now has the Nook WiFi listed on their website as well, along with the lower-priced 3G version.

The pr also mentions a new firmware upgrade, version 1.4, that gives all Nook 3G and Nook WiFi owners complimentary high-speed access to AT&T’s entire nationwide WiFi network. The update also has a new Go To Page feature, a new extra large font size, and some performance enhancements to open ebooks faster.

Filed under: New eBook Readers, News, Nook | Tags: best buy, nook lite, nook wifi | 2 Comments »

Best Buy.com has the iRex DR-800 marked down to $379 from the usual $399. It still says available online only, not sure why they haven’t gotten them in stores yet, considering it was released back in February.

Filed under: iRex, Sales and Discounts | Tags: best buy, dr-800, irex dr-800 | No Comments »

Now that the Nook officially sells from Best Buy, I noticed while leafing through the newspaper this morning that the Nook is on the first and second page of this week's Best Buy flyer, and it is also the first product advertised on their website's homepage.

The Nook sells for the exact same price as it does from Barnes and Noble, and both have free shipping when ordering online.

It's disappointing that Best Buy is giving the Nook so much advertising but isn't offering any promotional discount or incentive that makes it any better than buying from B&N.

And I really wish Barnes and Noble would stop saying they have over 1 million ebooks in the Nook advertisements; it's more than a little misleading when you subtract all the poorly-formatted public domain titles from Google and other free titles and come up with 135,455 actual ebooks for purchase, which is considerably less than their competitors.

Filed under: Nook | Tags: best buy, BN | No Comments »

It's official. The Barnes and Noble Nook is now selling from BestBuy.com, and will likely be available from Best Buy stores sometime in the near future.

It's a smart move by B&N to have their product displayed alongside Sony Readers and the iRex DR-800 on Best Buy's shelves. Competition is starting to heat up.

Filed under: Nook | Tags: best buy, BN | No Comments »