Kindle vs. Nook? Opinions?

[ZOOYUKA]

I'm kind of partial to Amazon since I am an Amazon junkie. I do know that the Nook supports epub. That is a huge plus.

What else should I be considering when I make my selection? How do the different stores compare (price, selection, functionality, etc.?)

I am just looking at the basic entry level wifi for both of them.

 

[gorcorps]

I have a Nook because it was the cheapest at the time, I don't really have too much attachment to either brand. It looks to me like both stores are fairly comparable in price and selection. B&N seems to have more free books to me though, and they change them up often enough.

Kindle has the physical button navigation, Nook uses a small touchscreen for navigation plus physical buttons on page turns.

Kindle has slightly better battery life IIRC

Kindle seems to have multiple hardware generations, Nook has one but updates the firmware often (and they're always good updates)

Hope it helps.

 

[Bateluer]

I have a nook and like it, but it has one MAJOR short coming. The books you buy are stored in a flat list, 10 per page. If you buy 20 books, you have two pages to scroll through to find the book you want. The more you buy or upload to the nook, the longer the list and the more pages to scroll through. Its not too big of a deal if you only ready a single book at at time as the device remembers what page you were on, but if you switch between the fiction book, the text book for school, and the technical self improvement book, it can get very tedious very quickly. The Kindle has Collections to address this. Not sure if the nook will this this functionality in their 1.5 firmware or not. Haven't seen a changelog of possibilities for it yet.

I believe this short coming back be addressed if you root the nook, but I haven't done much research into it.

 

[Dulanic]

I have 2 K3's and I love them. Any advantages the nook has (epub support) is easily fixable by running calibre and converting. I much prefer the Kindle overall and the battery life is insane, I went 3 weeks without charing it and that was with WIFI on. I didn't get the 3G one because I usually have access to WIFI anyways.

 

[Slick5150]

The new screen on the 3rd gen Kindles is noticeably better than the Nook or earlier Kindles. And yeah, the battery life is better on Kindle too.

They're also adding book loaning to them soon, which is a much needed feature, though apparently publishers can choose to allow it or not which is annoying.

 

[Bateluer]

I have 2 K3's and I love them. Any advantages the nook has (epub support) is easily fixable by running calibre and converting. I much prefer the Kindle overall and the battery life is insane, I went 3 weeks without charing it and that was with WIFI on. I didn't get the 3G one because I usually have access to WIFI anyways.

How'd you hack in that MicroSD card slot?

The built-in storage can store a great many books, but I definitely like having that SD slow, especially as the media gets cheaper and my collection of books grows.

Also useful if your one of those people who goes to Project Gutenberg and grabs everything.

 

[ZOOYUKA]

I have 2 K3's and I love them. Any advantages the nook has (epub support) is easily fixable by running calibre and converting. I much prefer the Kindle overall and the battery life is insane, I went 3 weeks without charing it and that was with WIFI on. I didn't get the 3G one because I usually have access to WIFI anyways.

Can you fill me in on some of the details of this process? How long does it take to convert. Is it still easy to navigate the book after conversion? What type of file are you converting the epub to?

 

[MrX8503]

I've never used the kindle, but I test ran the nook an it was painfully unresponsive. I dunno why, but I guess since a device is only doing one thing I expected it to be responsive like a smartphone.

 

[Cienja]

I have both. The Kindle is thinner, lighter, and faster than the Nook. On the other hand, I have found that books are less expensive through B&N than Amazon. The Kindle has a proprietary file format (.mobi or .prc), which does not work on any other reader, whereas the Nook (as many have mentioned) uses the .epub file format, which is used by pretty much every other reader available.

I haven't used it, but the Nook has a memory slot and the Kindle doesn't. The book file sizes are around 400k, so you can fit tons of books on either reader.

I use the Kindle more often than the Nook overall.

 

[jalaram]

I own neither, but wanted to add this thought.

My local library system allows lending of ebooks to the Nook as well. Maybe others do as well. It would be neat Kindle allowed for the same when it allows for sharing.

 

[Bateluer]

I've never used the kindle, but I test ran the nook an it was painfully unresponsive. I dunno why, but I guess since a device is only doing one thing I expected it to be responsive like a smartphone.

Just curious, which firmware? I watched some of the early nook hands on videos when it was first launched and there was a lot of lag in the page turns. After a few fw releases, its MUCH faster. Page turns on my nook with 1.4 take about the same amount of time as turning a printed page.

 

[Deeko]

I've never used the kindle, but I test ran the nook an it was painfully unresponsive. I dunno why, but I guess since a device is only doing one thing I expected it to be responsive like a smartphone.

This is something that has improved with each release, but its also partly a limitation of the e-Ink screen. It takes time to redraw with current technology.

For what its worth, I think the Kindle 2 vs Nook was an interesting comparison, with unique features to each, but I really think the Kindle 3 blows the Nook away. Smaller, lighter, better screen, etc. Plus Amazon is releasing an update that allows lending, which was a pretty big advantage to the Nook previously.

 

[MrX8503]

Just curious, which firmware? I watched some of the early nook hands on videos when it was first launched and there was a lot of lag in the page turns. After a few fw releases, its MUCH faster. Page turns on my nook with 1.4 take about the same amount of time as turning a printed page.

I'm not sure what firmware. It was a display model I was using when I stopped into Barnes. I wanted to see what was the main draw to the e-readers. I still need to try out the kindle.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

just bought a Kindle 3 and i LOVE it! My best friend has a Nook and had a few minor gripes over it, but he enjoys it. He did say if he didn't buy the Nook a few months before Kindle v3 he would have bought a kindle.

My new kindle was the first ebook reader I've used and i was shocked at the crispness of it. Flipping through pages took maybe a second. I love the size of the kindle it seems easy and light to just grasp on one hand and it feels pretty comfortable. I also purchased the black leather case from amazon and I think it's pretty good match. I like checking out amazon's free books and within a click on an "order" it is on the kindle. I haven't recharged the kindle yet so I don't know about how long it's going to last but I think it will be a solid 3-4 weeks on a single charge.

 

[ZOOYUKA]

Do all epubs convert with Calibre? Is there any DRM issues that won't allow this to happen?

 

[Dulanic]

Sorry to those that asked questions about Calibre. Honestly, for DRM Im not sure, tho DRM is stripable. I have converted all kinds of files with Calibre including epub, .lit, pdf, html and more. It is pretty basic, you tell it you want it to send all books you have in a amazon .mobi format and it will convert it for you. I havent really had to strip DRM yet but I know a quick google search gets a lot of results.

Honestly the main reason I use calibre is I have it setup to pull news feeds for me every day and send it to me in mobi format. Sometimes there is a bit of formating issues, but there are options you can change to correct them and I find it to be pretty rare outside of pdf since pdf formatting to so.... blah.

Anyways calibre can log into your gmail and send the converted books to a @free.kindle.com email address so it's no cost too and will get sent to your kindle as soon as you wifi connect.

 

[Glob]

So, I'm reading the specs on the Nook color, it's an IPS LCD and they quote 8 hours of read time. I'm due for a phone upgrade in January, and it really makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better to just read on the Android-based device I'll buy then.

 

[Bonesdad]

Had the same (in)decision this year too. Going to buy one of each (one for wife, one for me). I think either has it's advantages, but the K3 sounds most promising to me. I played with a Nook at BN, it was cool, and I'm excited to have both options to choose from. My wife and I read a lot, so this will keep us busy all winter. Good luck

 

[gorcorps]

Had the same (in)decision this year too. Going to buy one of each (one for wife, one for me). I think either has it's advantages, but the K3 sounds most promising to me. I played with a Nook at BN, it was cool, and I'm excited to have both options to choose from. My wife and I read a lot, so this will keep us busy all winter. Good luck

No offense but that seems like the worst thing to do. Both offer book sharing between people so you can each share books as you finish them. If you have different devices then that goes out the window.

 

[Dulanic]

No offense but that seems like the worst thing to do. Both offer book sharing between people so you can each share books as you finish them. If you have different devices then that goes out the window.

Not to mention with the K3, you just register both to the same account and no book lending is needed.

 

[Gooberlx2]

What's the liklihood the K3 will get epub compatibility? Apparently my local library also checks out books in epub format.

 

[Dulanic]

What's the liklihood the K3 will get epub compatibility? Apparently my local library also checks out books in epub format.

I'm guessing low, amazon hasnt mentioned supporting epub. If they wanted to do it, they would have already. Again it is easy to convert with calibre, but how do they "check out" a epub file?

I mean don't get me wrong.... I do wish they would just support epub on the kindle and maybe one day they will.

 

[ZOOYUKA]

Again it is easy to convert with calibre, but how do they "check out" a epub file?

I tried the convert, but the epub files that are checked out are all drm protected and will not allow it to be converted.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Yeah, it seems slim. After a little more research, it seems more likely that they could work something out with OverDrive to distribute with libraries. I think it would be smart of them to do, but who knows if Amazon ever would.