Hands On With The Nook, Along With Everyone Else

One of the perks of being a smaller, humbler tech blog, is we often get to experience new products the same way you do. No white glove PR rep service here (feel free to reference this blog in two years when we've gotten way too cocky). So in order to give the new nook a spin, a trip to the local Barnes & Noble was in order.

There were two display models, and three other people checking out the device. The woman at the special nook booth seemed knowledgeable, but maybe a bit tired of going through the nook spiel all day.

On to the device. The screen is quite legible. It was interesting to see multiple people (yours truly, included) attempt to tap the e-ink portion of the screen, expecting something to happen, even knowing full-well that the touch capability was in the smaller, color screen. If you're not familiar with the layout, there's a small color screen below the six inch diagonal e-ink screen.

That smaller screen has the look and interface feel of a narrow iPod Touch. The navigation is fairly easy to use, although the less tech savvy user might miss the relatively small "read" command to actually load the book onto the screen above.

One of the demo titles, Alice in Wonderland, had to be formatted before it was displayed. This was an automatic process, but took longer than expected, maybe 45 seconds. The screen is clear, and one of my concerns was answered: the color screen turns off so it doesn't compete with the e-ink screen while reading the book.

The in-store rep seemed unsure when/if the units would be in the retail stores for purchase, but if you plunk down $259 online, you can expect your nook to ship on January 15th.

It looks and feels like a better reader than the kindle, but there's something that still feels distant about reading on this device, versus cuddling up with a real book.