Here are three videos of the new Nook Color by Barnes and Noble.
These first two videos shows how B&N is focusing a lot on color content in the form of periodicals, cookbooks, and children’s books. It shows the AliveTouch feature in action, which allows kids to interact with books and have them read aloud.
The magazine demonstration looks interesting. There’s a window that pops up below the main article for scanning through pages and looking ahead. There’s a table of contents pop-up complete with images, headings, and descriptions. Then the newspaper video shows how there’s an article view for streamlined reading without any images or distractions.
B&N Nook Color Guided Tour
Nook Color Newsstand
Nook Color Hands-on Video
LaptopMag was able to get their hands on the Nook Color at the Barnes and Noble press event. This video is the most revealing of the three; it really shows the new Nook in action. The responsiveness of the touchscreen looks good, and colors are bright and vivid. There are plenty of customizing options for adjusting the appearance and formatting of ebooks. The video mentions that the Nook Color does not support Flash, unfortunately.
I can certainly see a market for this but it wouldn`t be for me.I`m trying to get away from all that stuff with an eReader.I hope Amazon always keeps their dedicated Pearl Reader with no color,no touch screen.
I notice the person from the Mag says it`s basically an eReader that does other stuff.
I`d say just the opposite.It does a whole lot of stuff and you can do some Reading on it,albeit on an LCD screen.
I`d say it`s a completely different product from an eReader.
Looks great though.
Designed to fail. (sorry B&N)
This is a doomed hybrid: no e-reader, nor tablet. For e-reading can’t match e-ink featured devices and for tablet it lacks processing power (sluggish page turn?! already in the coffin). Kid’s books and cooking books? Depends very much on the pricing – with a few exceptions, no one wants to pay $250 for the device and pretty much the full price for the books just because they look cool on the screen. And definitely I don’t want a e-reader that “reads” aloud to my kid. I enjoy reading for him and in the end he needs to READ for himself.
For both purposes there already much better alternatives in the wild.
Color e-ink or Mirasol, that would be something else…
Oh No Nook! A lot of people buying this are gonna be really disappointed.
The wide screen is the wrong format for ebooks:
– 4:3 ratio isn’t just some “old ereader legacy”, it’s what real books look like and what makes reading ebooks comfortable.
– The little 7″ wide screens aren’t so great for web-browsing either, too slim in portrait, too much scrolling in wide format.
Battery:
– “Up to” 8 hours of battery life translates to something LESS! Even if you do get 8 hours(in Alaska, in the winter, on the lowest backlight setting) that’s less than a Sunday afternoon with a good book! South of the polar circle people are going to have to charge this thing every few hours! Does that even work while using it?
If you can charge the Nookcolor while reading, it’s probably going to take a few hours because of the impressive power draw on the wimpy little battery. So a couple of hours of freedom and couple of hours tethered to an outlet.
That’s no good because the power cable is always too short and if you extend it, it gets too heavy. That’s bad on the sofa but it really sucks in bed and I know it! I used to freak out every time I changed position because the cable kept snagging and I was worried the tiny little connector might break. Incidentally, that was with an old ebookwise reader(something like ten year old hardware) which routinely gave me over 12 hours of untethered reading time!
That power/usb connector is on the bottom, exactly where anyone who actually uses the thing to read would like to rest the device. So people will have to turn off the accelerometer or gravity sensor and find a 180° rotation option(if it exists) in order to read in bed.
Maybe Steve Jobs was right when he said “people don’t read anymore”.
The people who designed this dumb thing certainly don’t!
One more thing.
$249 ??? Are they crasy?
For $149 I would’t even buy a Nook 1. I’d have even payed more than that for my Kindle 3!
I had them both right there in my hands to compare. No contest!
Perhaps for $99 I’d get one, crack it open, put in a bigger battery(or a second one in parallel), and then give it to my 10 year old niece as a christmas present!
I can see the market for this, actually I will get one. Maybe not for eBooks, but more for newspapers and magazines. I already own a PRS-505, so that will be the workhorse for reading real books. However, the Nook Color will be great for my subscription to The Economist. That is a weekly news magazine that is perpetually not delivered until Monday (it comes out on Thursday), so the e delivery will solve that issue. The Kindle model of The Economist lacks a lot of the graphs and of course has no color. Now if my newspaper would come out with a e subscription that would be great too. And of course one does not usually read a magazine or newspaper for more than a few hours, so the battery life is not as big a deal if that is the intended use.
Well…, it makes a very expensive subscription then.
Adrian,
I am not talking about just one subscription to one magazine. I am talking about combining all subscriptions to the device so you have the latest news and periodicals available when they come out, remember this includes some of the nations largest news papers. However, yes The Economist is a comparably expensive subscription for a news magazine, and getting the news in a timely manor is worth the relatively small investment in a device that can be used for that and many other purposes, IMO.
If you travel frequently you can still receive your formerly mailed subscriptions when they are published rather than when you return, and for a daily or weekly subscription that is important to a lot of people; especially business people on the road for a few weeks at a time.
Steve
Hi Steve,
It happens that business people carry a business laptop with them all the time (almost), or at least a business cell phone (or both). In my view Nook Color has nothing against these two (not to mention the combination). Even a basic netbook is no match for it: wi-fi, larger screen, connectivity, productivity etc at the same price and same battery life. I don’t see any reason why you can’t read those periodicals on the device that they already have and carry around.
For me it’s clear that Nook Color is for leisure, not business. If I would want a “color e-reader” I would go with iPad. I’m not a fan of Apple, but in this case their device is offering much more than Nook color – just speaking of reading, all major e-book sellers have an app, it’s not locked on one store.
Well to each his own I suppose. I being one of those traveling business people can speak only for my experience. I dislike reading on smartphones or netbooks, hence my PRS-505. If I read on those then I would have no need for an eReader of any kind. The iPad is definitely an option, but at double the cost of the Nook Color it is more than I would care to spend to read a magazine or newspaper and it suffers from most of the same business shortfalls as the Nook Color, again at double the price.
With that said, I agree that it is more geared towards leisure. But I also believe my point stands that it is best used for periodicals and light reading, reading that takes no more than an hour or so a day.
I agree with all your points. Nook Color alone is fit for purposes enumerated by you.
All I’m saying is: Do we really need a device just for magazines and color books, a device that uses the same technology already incorporated in other devices doing what Nook Color is doing (and more than that)?