Went on a road trip to FL and forgot to bring a book with me for the flight back so I decided to buy an e-book reader. My choices were a Nook, Kindle or ipad. Doing some research prior to deciding on which to buy, I came up with the following

Nook Color and ipad
PROS:
Web browser and more apps.
CONS:
Personally my eyes start to strain after reading books from an LCD.
Battery life is only 8 hours for the Nook color and 10 hours for the ipad.
$259 and $499

Kindle
PROS:
Battery life with wifi/3g off is 3 to 4 weeks
E-ink screen
$139 for wifi only, $189 with 3g
Web browser
Linux OS
CONS:
Proprietary book format
No open app development for the system
Can not share books

Nook
PROS:
Battery life of 10 days with wifi/3g off
E-ink screen
$149 for wifi only, $199 with 3g
Android platform so lots of apps are likely
Open book format
CONS:
Battery life is worse than Kindle
Many complaints about the web browser
Can only share a book once and only for up to 14 days
Interface was laggy but is supposedly improved with the latest update
No backlight


So with those thoughts in mind I decided on going to a Barnes and Noble store to buy a Nook. The employee who I spoke to was very helpful when trying to decide between the wifi or 3g version. He told me that the reason there is no 3g service plan to pay for (which seemed amazing to me) is because they aren't expecting much network usage since the web browser can't be used for much (which in turn is why the Nook color doesn't come with 3g). He also mentioned as a benefit that they've already been hacked and will probably have lots of apps soon because of it which seemed strange to me since I made no impressions that I knew anything about technology. He also showed me that the laggy interface has been improved and only takes maybe a second to change pages which is acceptable. The impression I ended up walking away with (after purchasing the wifi nook for $149) was that B&N created the e-book reader simply as another way to sell books, not as a way to break into the technology sector and that they actually like people to hack these things because that means more people will be likely to buy e-/books from B&N.

Excited to use my new Nook, I was too busy to that night so i figured I'd follow the instructions and let it charge overnight before beginning to use it (anyone know why they recommend this?). Waking up that morning with it charging for about 10 hours it said it had only charged to 91% which I found odd but no time to deal with that now, gotta buy a couple books for my plane ride home in a few hours.

So my first interaction with the device was setting up the network activity. If you haven't seen the nook, it has a small color touchscreen at the bottom which you use to navigate around, type, etc. It takes a minute to get used to but once you are used to it, it feels pretty natural. The interface for typing was a bit strange, it takes a second or two for the characters you type to show up on the e-ink screen but I find myself making mistakes MUCH less than on my android touchscreen phone. So now the device is set up connected to the network so it's time to buy some books. The first annoying thing I found (was actually told by the sales guy) was that I had to create an account on the website to register my nook and couldn't do it directly from the reader. So not having a computer around I had to use my phone to create an account (i didn't think of using the nook web browser). This was just a one time thing though so it I won't hold it against the nook.

Once registered I saw a couple of password options in the settings. I'm really not sure what these settings do but I'd like a password so people can't use my account to buy books from my device (does B&N store credit cards? I apparently failed as a "security expert" by not noticing). Finding the books I wanted and buying them was actually really easy to do (Smart Mobs and Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself). I was also happy to find out that I saved about 33% by buying nook books instead of actual books so eventually I will recoup the cost of the nook. OK books are bought, one last thing i want to do before getting on the plane is check out the web browser. The web browser actually impressed me. On the e-ink screen is a black and white version of the web page while in the touch screen area is a small cut of the web page (in color). I only had time to check out this site but I was pleasantly surprised by the look of it. I can definitely see using the web browser to read articles easily however general web browsing probably won't be very good. OK, time to go get on my plane.

First thing I did when I got on the plane was set it to airplane mode (I did however forget to set my phone to airplane mode and I discovered you can get text messages during flight). Reading on the nook turned out to be great! The e-ink screen really amazes me as it looks much different than an LCD screen; it looks like the text is actually written on the screen. Usually I can't even read paper books on a plane for that long as I start feeling a little sick but, I managed to read my Nook the for the entire 3 hour flight. Feeling happy about this and sad that my lay over had been delayed for an additional 45 minutes, I decided to go celebrate in the airport bar. My one or two beers turned into about 3 beers and 6 or 10 red bull vodkas. As a side note, I met a/the project manager for Dell's mobile phone division at the bar. This was the first I had ever even heard that Dell made cell phones. She showed me hers and I found out why. This thing has got to be the ugliest phone I have ever seen. It just looks like a huge brick but bigger with a very unappealing screen.

Well back on the plane now, drunk and a bit upset that the lady in the aisle seat wont trade for my window seat because I know I'm going to have to get up a few times use the bathroom because of all the caffeine and alcohol i just drank. I decide to get my Nook back out and start reading again. What happens next amazes me, I actually managed to read for the next 2 - 3 hours while drunk. I'm not trying to claim that this is because it's a nook, it's more likely that I just wanted to concentrate on anything other than having to piss, but I do at least have to give it credit for being readable while drunk.

So flights over, i've been reading for about 5 hours in airplane mode, played (and lost) at the nook chess app for about 15 minutes, and downloaded a couple of books so I had maybe 7 hours of usage. I look at the battery and it's down to 32%. This is very discerning since a total of about 10 hours of usage is much less than the 10 days advertised. A couple days later I decided to take my nook back to a B&N store to find out what the hells going on, this experience turned out to be one of the best experiences I've had at a store. The sales guy at the nook counter tells me its very unusual and that I should be getting closer to 10 days on it. He says that he'll have to call the tech dept which shouldn't take long since get straight through (vs if i call i'll probably be on hold forever) and then he could replace my battery. Well the tech dept had already closed so he offered to just replace the batter or alternatively if i just go home and get the receipt they can replace the entire unit. Replacing the unit sounded better than just the battery so I go get the receipt and the replace the nook without any hassle.

I haven't got a chance to use the nook much since I replaced it but so far the battery life seems to be normal. I'll update when I have some more details on the battery life. So far I've really enjoyed my nook and would definitely recommend it to others. I haven't yet tried to hack my nook and I'm not sure I'm going to since right now I don't see anything I would want to do with it other than read books. One final thing to say about this is that I was looking at getting a case for the nook but they were all $40+ which just seems ridiculous for a small little pleather case. One of them had a built in (pull out) light but I didn't see how much that one cost and something about it made it seem like something a very old person would use. The sales guy seemed to be on my side about their price though and recommended that I could probably find one much cheaper online.

--Eric Kinolik