The B&N we visited had a nice little Nook stand set up right as you walked through the door, staffed by real people who were there to answer your questions. I saw there were some Nooks on display and thought 'this is gonna be fun'.
As a disclaimer, this was my first time using an ebook reader, myself preferring to read printed, bound books instead of electronic ink books. But I was willing to put that aside and figure out which model would be the best for my friend.
As we stood at the counter, I reached out to play with the Nook and was confused when I couldn't tap the screen (where the book text is) to make it do anything. Then I noticed the dual interfaces (see pic below) and was further confused, thinking 'which is for what?'
Then there were these two arrow buttons on each side of the ebook and no discernible power button. I thought to myself that I had been stymied by much more sophisticated tech before and that I could surely figure this one out.
It took me a few minutes but I realized that the upper interface was merely for reading. ONLY reading. To advance to another page, you pressed the arrows on the side of the ebook. To go to a specific 'bookmark' or chapter in a book, you had to use the bottom interface which was a touchscreen and in color. It was also how you navigated the OS and chose books.
Ok, I thought this was kinda stupid to break up the operation and reading screens as well as the navigation of the device. And I'm hard pressed to come up with an example of a similarly designed device now a days.
I also had a hard time with is the lack of interactivity between the Wifi-enabled Nook and the online B&N account they require you to set up. You must set up this account with an email address, credit card, etc, in order to download books. But the catch is that the Nook and the online account don't actually talk to each other. So the 'to read' list you set up online is just online--it never gets transfered to the Nook. So this forces you to view your account on a computer and then use the Nook to search for books to download from your list.
Next, it was to figure out the model question. I first asked the guy 'What does the internet look like on this thing?' thinking that would be what my friend would use the 3G service for. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. As I watched it load a Yahoo portal page, I suddenly had a new found respect for my 3G iphone and it's blazing (compared to this) download speed. As I scrolled through the page, I noticed a box around some of the text moving along with me as i scrolled. Turns out, since the webpage was displayed above, in the book text area (which is not clickable), the box was denoting which part of the page was being displayed down below (in the clickable/touchable area). It was at this point, I decided that it was NOT worth the extra $50 for the 3G model so she chose the Wifi one.
I thought it was all well and good until we tried to set it up at home. We went to my house since I was closer and had a Wifi network set up. I turned on the machine and unfolded the 10 step directions to attempt to connect it to a wifi network.
Strange things happened though. When I entered the Wifi set up options, I was taken to the 'Airplane Mode' section. When I tried to access the settings in a different way, I was taken to the 'Airplane Mode'. I searched the internet for terms like 'Nook not connecting to wifi' and 'wifi set up wrong nook' but I couldn't come up with anything. I finally relented and called tech support (at 5pm on a Sunday) and was told that there was something wrong with the firmware that kept the device in Airplane Mode. I could do a stepback with the firmware over the phone with him or exchange the device.
Seeing as it was brand new (no books had been downloaded on it), I opted for the exchange and headed out to my closest B&N (not the original store we purchased it at). Once there, I found out that not all stores had the Wifi-only model but they would be happy to help me. They took a look at it and even though I told them not to try to fix it, they did. I had to wait about 20 mins for the guy to do a firmware stepback on a brand new device which I had already told him I wanted to exchange. *sigh*
Then it was off to another store which went much better. Devices were exchanged and when I sat in the cafe and tried to connect it to the store's Wifi, it worked perfectly!
Overall, I would have to say that the Nook is for people who really want to have to learn how to use a device before they can use it.
Now, I'm curious to get my hands on a Kindle!
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