Kindle or Nook?

[Suzanne]

I have just received a Nook tablet and after using the first gen. Pandigital for over a year, I am in hog heaven. I should say pig heaven because I have become addicted to angry birds.

Pandigitals are linked with Barnes and Noble, so I needed to get a Nook to transfer my books. What I love about B&N are the book collections they offer at very attractive prices. Instead of downloading countless titles on project guttenburg I will just buy the entire collection of works by classic authors. These collections will have 50 or more books in them and cost only a few bucks.

Neither. Book. I love the feel, the smell, the sensation a book gives me. I love the excitement of browsing in bookshops, finding old stuff out of print for decades. A book is more than the words it contains, it is an individual object which cannot be satisfactorily broken down into its components.

I still browse used book stores and still buy numbers of used hard copies of books, but for me, I love to read and want as many books as I can collect, whether those books are bound in paper or inside my little seven inch device. Yesterday I realized that I will have to become imortal to read all the books and novels that I have amassed.

Very depressing

[CWT36]

I have just received a Nook tablet and after using the first gen. Pandigital for over a year, I am in hog heaven. I should say pig heaven because I have become addicted to angry birds.

Pandigitals are linked with Barnes and Noble, so I needed to get a Nook to transfer my books. What I love about B&N are the book collections they offer at very attractive prices. Instead of downloading countless titles on project guttenburg I will just buy the entire collection of works by classic authors. These collections will have 50 or more books in them and cost only a few bucks.

Neither. Book. I love the feel, the smell, the sensation a book gives me. I love the excitement of browsing in bookshops, finding old stuff out of print for decades. A book is more than the words it contains, it is an individual object which cannot be satisfactorily broken down into its components.

I still browse used book stores and still buy numbers of used hard copies of books, but for me, I love to read and want as many books as I can collect, whether those books are bound in paper or inside my little seven inch device. Yesterday I realized that I will have to become imortal to read all the books and novels that I have amassed.

Very depressing

I couldn't agree more Suzanne. I recently got a Kindle after years of saying that it's not the same thing as a book, and it isn't. I don't get the same feeling that I get from holding that book, so I'm still reading the old fashioned way.

However I found a goldmine with the Kindle that I never expected, hundreds of free books that I actually love! I'm a revolutionary era history buff and the amount of really good books available astounded me. Books written at the time history happened, books written by Jefferson and Adams and Paine. Books filled with correspondence between the founding fathers and the continental congress. Holy Crap it's like being a kid in a candy store.

[DamianLake]

Time to start being very cautious of the B&N Nook!!

If you don't follow business news, Barnes & Noble just announced today that they may be forced to spin off its Nook device business because they are hurting so bad. Someone else MIGHT come in and buy the Nook line and continue to support the device, but the future is very unknown for the device.

If this does happen, then the question of the device's future seriously comes into question. Will whoever takes up the burden change the pricing structure? Will they offer quality content or cheep crap no one is really interested in? Will they improve or ruin the device and service in the attempt to stamp their own corporate brand on the Nook?

It is reminiscent of what HP did last year when they announced they would drop their new tablet product line only a month after it's release. B&N, (like HP did), recently launched a new commercial campaign to show how awesome their Nook is with singers and friendly, helpful people in a last ditch effort to improve the Nook's revenue stream, only to admit inevitable defeat a short time later. I am starting to view High School Musical type commercials as a sign of impending doom for any technology they are attempting to hock.

Long story short, might be best to stick with Kindle in the foreseeable future.

[fionamc]

I am still a reader of paper books but am considering buying the Kindle..tired of lugging heavy books around when I commute to work. As I am based in Ireland I dont think the Nook would particularly suit me. Is there any other e reader that I should consider before purchasing ?

[heledd]

I am based in West Africa. And just to be able to read stuff is so fantastic. Never mind whether it is in page format or Kindle. I have stuff to read!! WowWW. I have been so desperate in the past I have read newspapers over four years old!! You don't know how lucky you are to have a choice

[R. LeBeaux]

Long story short, might be best to stick with Kindle in the foreseeable future.

I agree. The fact is that Amazon is more likely to be around for a long time, while others come and go. I've been dealing with them practically since their inception, both as a customer and an affiliate, and during that time I have seen many newer online companies disappear.

[Dave The Marine]

Interesting spin Damianlake, Barnes and Noble is considering spinning off the Nook because it is making money while their bookstores are currrently losing money. By Spinning it off they protect it from the business troubles of their stores. While it is possible both could collapse I find it highly doubtful, bankruptcy does not imply disappearing no matter what Obama told you, bankruptcy is company reorganization coming out the other side leaner and more profitable, and since the Nook is their most profitable product even with bankruptcy it would not go away.

[DamianLake]

Bankruptcy does not imply disappearing no matter what Obama told you.

OK, I don't argue politics online, but please refrain from posting your brainwashed opinions in response to any of my statements. I suggest you do a little research first to verify that your OPINIONS are actually somewhat factual, and then I suggest you go watch the interview with Barnes & Noble own CEO before you start assuming you know what the future of the company is. (Because you clearly haven't.)

I further direct your attention to the way I said the company MIGHT, (emphasis on MIGHT for those people like you who are too blind to read small print), sell the line to a purchaser. Anyone who has ever actually followed business news, (a population that clearly does not count you among it's numbers), knows that when a product line is picked up by a second company, anything at all can happen and the original company can't do much about it.

Also, I find your blind faith that just because a product MIGHT, (another debatable point), be good, it is divinely blessed and will therefore survive the death of its company...even with a strong competitor to reduce the potential Lazerous effect. That is sort of naively endearing.

So before you start screaming again about B&N's survival in the future, let me again point out that everything I said was only meant to point out the POSSIBLE troubles in store for the company's future, and the KNOWN problems that often crop up when a line within a company has been spun off in the past or bought outright by a second party. You might have a vested product loyalty to the Nook, but it is a point that anyone considering which they might want to buy for the first time ought to keep in mind.