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B&N Nook Tablet vs. Amazon Kindle Fire
DeviceGuru writes with this excerpt: "Barnes & Noble is expected to announce a 7-inch color tablet on November 7th, positioning it head-to-head with Amazon's recently announced Kindle Fire. B&N's Nook Tablet is rumored to have a slightly faster processor, twice the RAM and flash, and a $50 price premium relative to Amazon's tablet, among other differences. The quick-reference table in this article compares key features and specs of the two 7-inch Android tablets, based on a combination of leaked data published at Engadget.com plus some additional data from B&N's existing Nook Color specs, which seems to have much in common with this new, higher-end Nook model."
I've been following the announcements of the Kindle Fire and I'm sort of wondering if Amazon is abandoning what was so good about the platform, namely electronic ink. One has always been able to read a book off the LCD screen of one's smartphone or notebook, but the Kindle was a pleasurable experience because e-ink really is easier on the eyes. If the Kindle is going LCD, then it's just like any other tablet out there.
Abandoning e-ink by introducing new e-ink Kindle Touches? Really?
I I'm sort of wondering if Amazon is abandoning what was so good about the platform, namely electronic ink.
Five E-Ink Kindles vs one video-capable tablet doesn't quite add up to abandonment.
if they had stopped selling and coming up with new models of them, then sure, you would have a point.
but there's plenty of stuff the eink displays suck for.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Why the fuck are e-books so expensive? Many of them are just slightly less than the actual book! Why the hell am I going to spend almost as much money buying the e-book, but not actually get anything physical out of the deal?
It was one thing when it came to buying digital music. You could spend $1 to get the song that you wanted, rather than paying $25 to get a CD with the song that you wanted. That's a big enough price difference to make it worthwhile. But with e-books, it's just stupid to spend $15 on a e-book, while the actual book is only $17.
There's no excuse for e-book prices to be that high. While authors and editors do deserve to get paid, e-books reduce the manufacturing and distribution costs to almost nothing. I just don't buy that the $2 more spent on a real book will cover the costs of harvesting of the trees used to make the paper, the manufacturing of the paper itself, the shipping of the massive paper rolls to the publisher, the cost and setup of the publishing equipment, the ink used to print the book, the typesetting, the creation of the cover art, the printing of the cover (especially for hardcover books), the cutting of the paper, the binding of the book, the packing of the finished books, the shipping to the publisher's and/or distributor's warehouses, the storage costs at these warehouses, the shipping to the individual bookstores, and the salaries of the many people involved with all of this.
I will not buy an e-book as long as it's clear that I'm getting blatantly ripped off.
The amazon tablet, as opposed to the amazon readers, is just another tablet. What is special about it and why it will win is Silk backed by the Amazon cloud. Now you have awesome power in a cheap tablet. B&N is trying to compete on specs at the low end and there's almost no amount of minot spec improvement that will rival the added power of the cloud. Amazons silk web pages will almost always open faster. Amazon can add a Siri like personal assistant. B&N can't add those things. some third party might do it for them but it won't be as integrated.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm not interested in owning a Nook unless it uses proprietary file formats and locks me into getting ALL my content from Barnes & Noble.
But I think what people were hoping for with this generation of kindle was a kindle with just a tad more improvements. Basically, the kindle fire isn't a kindle. The Kindles they did come out with are identical to the last kindle with the exception of a touch screen that's nothing more than a gimmick. I think what everyone was expecting was COLOR e-ink first of all... then maybe a decent web browser... better PDF support or at least a way to convert PDFs into something readable. Maybe some tools, a calculator, calendar, I dunno, something to add some utility.
Kindle is customized Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread), not 3.x.
Rather large difference there.
The best thing that the Nook tablet has over the Kindle is that it has an SD card reader. This is what made the Nook color so easy to hack. Just put in an SD card with an alternate OS and boot. Easiest hack ever, no risk of bricking, AND tons of extra space available for installing apps/media. Once hacked, you not only have access to the android market but the Amazon market as well. Without an SD card reader, I have zero interest in the kindle. Im not suer the new Nook has enough advancements though to justify an upgrade from the nook color, but once an alternate OS is available I may pick one up and relegate the nook color to ereader functionality.
"and a $50 price premium relative to Amazon’s tablet"
Human beings would say "and is $50 more expensive than Amazon's tablet". You don't have to write in an unnatural way to justify your position as a journalist.
You can get a Viewsonic g tablet for about the same price and it has more ports:
http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/viewsonic-g-tablet/4507-3126_7-34431221.html?tag=mncol;subnav
:T:R:A:N:S:
Don't forget the Kobo Vox - 7" colour eReader w/ web browser and Android apps for $199. The big advantage of Kobo is that you can run their software on the Kobo, iPad/iPhone, Android, BB, Palm or computer. Each title is fully transportable so you don't need to worry about device lock-in.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I wonder what the difference between the "new" one and my existing Nook Color running CyanogenMod?
Perhaps what you are hoping for just isn't possible with eink?
I'm sure if amazon could use eink for colour and *responsive* web browsing they would have done so. The fact that they have moved to LCD in order to cater to the people who do want exactly what you say you want should tell you something about the capabilities of the different screen techs and whether they see eink as ever doing well for web browsing and colour or interactive media.
Also, the addition of a touch screen to the normal kindle definitely is not a small step- it's a huge change in the way you interact with the device. If it weren't for the fire everyone would be more interested in it. If the fire does well I imagine they'll move all their eink readers to android too (hence the new touchscreen) so there's no point them developing lots of apps for an older kindle platform at this point. The kindle as a separate software platform from android will probably die off at some point, so really the fire is closer to future kindles than the kindle.
Shouldn't this story run after B&N releases their nook tablet? What's the point of comparing the Kindle Fire to this vapor tablet?
Why even mess around with something that can only read one format? You can get an 8" Vizio at Costco for $189. Or you can get a Lenovo IdeaPad A1 with GPS for $199.
Here is my quick-n-dirty review of sub-$300 Android tablets.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
There are decent tablets out there for under $200 - such as the Vizio 8" ($189 at Costco). Or the Lenovo Ideapad A1 ($199 on Amazon, and includes GPS, cameras, and many other features).
With Black Friday coming up, there will probably be even better deals.
With a tablet, you can read any format. Plus use it for games, etc.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
I think that I'll wait until I see some comments by ordinary users with the mass delivered machines. I seem to remember people being excited about vista before they actually got to use the final delivered thing.
Amazon is hardly abandoning e-ink, because you can still buy a Kindle with e-ink -- at lower prices than ever if you can accept their screensaver advertisement scheme.
As far as whether LCD or e-ink is better, I happen to have both a Kindle and a rooted Nook Color with the Kindle Reader software installed. So I always have a choice when I want to read a Kindle book of reading it on e-ink or LCD. There are some situations where e-ink wins hands down (reading in bright ambient light), others were LCD wins (photos; diagrams of almost any kind; reading in darkened rooms or in bed), and others where it is the touchscreen that makes the difference (highlighting text and entering notes).
So given a free choice of reading a book on a e-ink Kindle or an LCD tablet, most of the time I choose the LCD. With a larger, higher resolution touchscreen e-ink display, it might be about even. There's no question that e-ink in bright ambient light is the best for reading text, but I find the UI on the second generation Kindle irritating even after owning it for a couple of years. The semantics of "back" seems to be a bugbear in many UI designs; touchscreen reader UIs tend to use screen gestures to flip pages and buttons to back out of books. I find this works well, so the Kindle Touch probably brings the Kindle up to parity with reading a Kindle book on an Android tablet in the UI department.
Reading a Kindle book on my wife's iPad is even better, because the iPad's rendering is better -- at least if you read books with lots of math in them like I do. The Kindle mangles equations and makes tables a pain in the neck to read. The iPad reader also allows you to zoom in to photos, which as yet neither the nook reader nor the Amazon reader software for Android allow. Sometimes I keep an iPod touch handy when reading on the Nook or Kindle in case the formatting is messed up or I need to get a good look at a photograph or diagram.
As much as I hate to say this, it seems the bet choice in terms of convenience and user experience is using Amazon and Barnes and Noble's reader software on an Apple device.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How rootable is the Kindle Fire? It's trivially easy with the Nook Color; that's why I bought one.
I highly doubt the things the gp was talking about couldn't be done an eInk display. I'd be especially interested in better PDF support. I don't know why I have to pull out a device that eats batteries if I want to read PDFs on an electronic device.
There is no point in an Australian buying these devices, since it's impossible to download e-books in Australia from either Amaxnone or Barnes&NotNoble.
How fucked is that?
The deciding factor for me was that the nook was compatible with the library lending systems around here, and the kindle was not. If you pirate your ebooks that isn't an issue obviously, but if you want to check them out online from your local library it's a good thing to look into before purchasing.
I'm not sure there can be anything done to improve the "support" of PDF files by the Kindle. I think we need better tools for mungling the PDF file and returning a good combination of plain text and images.
PDFs definitely could (and should) be done.
However as to everything else, colour is neither satisfactory nor cheap on eink just now, web browsing which works well is impossible due to refresh rates, video is similarly impossible, and stuff like a calendar etc doesn't really make commercial sense for Amazon when they are also pushing android apps via their store. Given the resources put into their android store I'd expect to see them move entirely to that at some point soon. So you may see android devices with an eink screen which can view PDFs etc, but at that point the limitations will become even more painfully apparent; stuff which requires scrolling is not going to work well if the refresh rate is still slow.
Amazon is offering a wide array of products to meet the needs of different market segments, which is a perfectly normal thing for companies to do.
Want a cheap e-reader? The entry level model is just $80.
Want easier text entry? Choose between the touchscreen version or the keyboard, both at $100.
Want to access the internet away from WiFi? Pay $40 extra for Whispersync.
Want a big screen for reading PDFs without pan & zoom, and have money to burn? Get the DX for $380.
Want to watch videos and play games and browse the web? Get the Fire at $200.
Here's your car analogy of the day: Chevy offers the electric Volt now, but that doesn't mean that they're going to pull all their gas-engine cars from the market.
The "better PDF support" line has been mentioned a bunch, but I can't tell what it means.
I've had a Kindle since v2, and have the graphite one with the keyboard now. I don't read many PDF's, but on the rare occasion I need to, it seems to do the job. I could see a larger screen helping. Other than that, what needs to be better about it?
The Kindle e-ink devices already have some apps. The technical underpinnings are there to support many more very helpful and useful apps, and I for one would love to see that happen. Some examples of apps that already exist:
IMO, the other replies to this are full of crap. Not only are these apps possible and useful, but they already exist.
One I would personally like to find ("find", because it'd surprise me if it didn't exist already) is a better music player. The one that's built in basically has no GUI. I'd love for one to be integrated so it could popup a mini gui on the top of the page with a menu press. I'd also love to see micro sd card support in one of the e-ink models, and more file format support (I don't care much about PDF myself, but adding support for non-drm'd epub would save me a lot of calibre time).
Web browsers that display static stuff well is viable and quite easy to imagine on e-ink. Any refresh rate that is enough for reading a book is also enough for reading an article on the web. Yet, it would need some developper time for customizing the browser (hight upfront costs, for a feature that is demanded from several people, no, big corportations aren't fit to that market).
Calculator, calendar and a few other tools are quite viable, and just common sense. I can't really understand why no e-reader comes with those.
Now, for color and video you are right. Those aren't fit for e-paper, at least for now.
What would be a killer feature of the newer devices is a highter refresh rate on non-epub files. Now that we have better bateries there is little reason not to put a faster processor on them and deal well with every kind of file. But I really don't expect that feature to come from Amazon.
Rethinking email
Until Amazon makes them change, the library doesn't charge anything for e-books.
IBM will win http://www.telemonster.org/
Amazon doesn't create the eInk displays, so if a color eInk display isn't available, how will they make a color eInk Kindle? The Fire is just another device, likely for Amazon to sell and sell subscriptions to streaming/downloadable media, in addition to ebooks.
And touch isn't a gimmick. Double tapping a word to get the definition or selecting a paragraph for highlighting beats the pants off of doing the same with a d-pad.
The touch wasn't probably a huge step for Amazon as Sony already has had it on older models. Sony even treaded the water with a touch overlay on top of the eInk screen, which everyone hated, which meant that Amazon didn't have to fumble with it.
plug. My book is available in paperback, kindle and epub format here,
I think that, compared to the paperback version of £16/$23 (US), about £8/$12 (US) is about right. There are various matters that dictate the price of an electronic book; do you exclude the printing costs that are inherent in the printed version? The ethical answer would be yes, but how much do you exclude? Do you want the ebook to subsidise the sales, or lack of, of a printed book? Also, how much do you want to charge compared to competitors books? Too little and you'll never make a profit; too much and you'll price yourself out of the market. Then theres the pricing structure that Amazon and nearly everyone else imposes under the Independant Publisher Programme (if you decide to publish your books yourself without a publishing house to do all the work); if you want 70% of the royalties, then your book is limited to be within a certain pricing band, which suppresses any potential profits.
I can't help but think that if you try and publish a book yourself, you're almost certain to be doomed to failure. You don't have the overheads of printing and distribution but then again, you don't have the clout of a marketing house to do all the hard work. Writing books
does not pay very well, unless you're Dan Brown or of his ilk. A friend of mine writes books on the same subject matter as mine, and his books sell for about £16. When his sales hit 1000 copies, he gets £1000. This doesn't seem fair to me; the author did all the hard work
and without all his work, there'd be no book for any other organisation to milk in the first place.
One more point about electronic books; they seem to be the future, but that doesn't mean printed versions will die away immediately, if at all. I used to work for Cambridge University Press, proof reading their electronic books; the process of scanning and processing electronic books, particularly very old texts, resulted in a lot of errors creeping in. We were told that the Press was cutting back on its
printing processes, and closing its warehouse down, the staff who work there being told that they would work at DHL many many miles away (they were not happy at this news!). The business objective was not to print, stockpile and distribute books, but to adopt a "print on demand" model. The electronic book market has grown so much that it seems to have dominated the business models of the future.
Well, you're comparing apples to oranges really. eInk readers are meant for one thing: reading. They are book readers. Tablets are tough-based computers. Different technologies, and obviously the LCD will allow you to display PDFs better, allow for zooming in, etc. eInk is just not for that, and I don't know why people have a hard time keeping that in mind. As far as math equations, they'd render finr on eInk if they were published in ePub for eInk devices, but they aren't. Blame the publishers, not the device.
Also, for reading in bed, there are many covers out that have LED lights. You can buy a clipon LED light for $7. And they work great. They illuminate the text perfectly and evenly. Really, it comes down to one's preference and what type of reading they do. If I stare at an LCD all day, I'll likely choose an eInk display for a novel. If I want to read a service manual for my car, I'll use an LDC based device, even a laptop, over eInk (even though reading that manual would be fine on my Sony PRS-650, if I knew which pages I wanted for reference, but simply browsing and flipping from page to page is more arduous.)
A few years back, an Android tablet for $249 was a BFD.
Today, you can get a real Android tablet, with GPS, and cameras, etc., for under $200.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Today, it's silly to fuss with rooting/hacking an ebook reader to get a sub-standard Android tablet. Just buy an Android tablet, it's better, and cheaper.
Might want to give the touch-screen e-ink nook a try, then. The touch screen accepts swipe gestures, touching sides or middle, and there are two buttons on the side for flipping pages. You don't leave the book itself without touching the n button which is located in a place that you are not likely to hit accidentally across a number of different ways of holding the device. Also, the buttons on the sides can be flipped as to whether the top advances or the bottom advances, to allow the most comfortable holding position.
It actually has fewer features than the first gen nook, but the features it has are pretty well thought out. Also, it accepts ePub natively, which Amazon has yet to allow without wonky conversions for some reason...
And using the software on an iPad, B&N syncs your last page across the devices for purchased books.
\end{shill}
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I just ordered both the Kindle Touch and Fire. So why is it either/or? You can get both e-ink and a media player for less most tablets.
maybe they made things better for music, but they actively did worse things for prices on eBooks in order to build up support for iBooks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/technology/11reader.html
http://www.idealog.com/blog/apples-disruption-of-the-ebook-market-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-tablet
It was one thing when it came to buying digital music. You could spend $1 to get the song that you wanted, rather than paying $25 to get a CD with the song that you wanted. That's a big enough price difference to make it worthwhile. But with e-books, it's just stupid to spend $15 on a e-book, while the actual book is only $17.
But you're merely haggling over price, as the old joke goes. I don't think digital handcuffs become acceptable at any price because I don't want to be taken advantage of. The physical book confers rights of ownership DRM is designed to take away regardless of how little one pays for the DRM-riddled alternative. As George Hoteling saw first hand years ago, one might not have right of first sale anymore. Even ostensible advantages one might imagine come nearly free in digital format aren't necessarily there like they should be as Wil Wheaton saw when he updated his iPod software with Apple software and lost all of his tracks only to learn Apple would restore them in what Wheaton called a "one-time only do-over to replace all of your purchased music, free of charge". Magnatune.com, on the other hand, lets you restore purchased tracks as many time as you want, share tracks with others, and Magnatune always sold its wares DRM-free. Inexpensive digital media doesn't become more attractive with restrictions management.
Digital Citizen
E-ink is fine in sunlight or bright indoor lighting, but a backlit screen has many valid advantages as an e-book reader screen. A crappy analogy is that some shoes are designed for indoor use and some for outdoor use. You can use either wherever you like, because they all cover your feet, but you'll be making compromises.
I do about three quarters of my reading on Kindle and a quarter on a Palm TX - yeah, I'm in need of an upgrade but it's an ideal adjunct to my cross trainer. And don't tell me backlit screens are bad for your eyes - it's like claiming music is bad for your ears when you have the volume turned up to eleven. Read gray text off a dark background with brightness at minimum and you have a display with similar contrast to e-ink that you can read in bed with the lights out. I swear so many people who claim to hate reading off a backlit screen have used some pretty program that attempts to emulate a bright white page and slapped it across their face like Geordi's visor.
Needs Zork.
I suggest getting a NookTouch and root it then, join the party:
from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1329648
"
Now that you've rooted your NookTouch what do you install onto it?
I've been trying out loads of apps and I've found plenty that work well but also quite a few that make a lot of sense on an eink ereader.
First the ones that I personally find very useful and match the NookTouch well:
1) ReaditLater: Let's say you're browsing on your laptop while eating your breakfast in the morning. You don't have time to read it now so you click a button in Firefox or whatever and that marks the page. You then hit sync on the Nook and you can then read that webpage on the Nook at work in your lunchhour or whatever. I've only checked out ReaditLater and it doesn't always sync all images properly and css styles... is there any alternatives... perhaps opensource?
2) RSS Readers. Subscribe to Slashdot, sync while at home and then read it on the move. Can anyone get the ability to read the more interesting comments?
3) VNC Viewer. Eyes go squiffey after reading for hours on the ipad or computer? Setup a quick link to this.
4) MapDroyd. No GPS but having a map with a long battery life might be more useful than a mobile phone. MapDroyd isn't that great without pinch to zoom but it works.
5) Kindle. Being able to read .mobi is obviously pretty handy.
6) OperaMobile, connecting to a Caliber server. Caliber organises books really easily and it has a server function so you can connect to your library on your computer.
7) Dropbox. A really handy way to share and sync files to the Nook. Can act as a library but unlike the Opera & Caliber example it can sync rather than only viewing live.
8) There's more than ebooks. Check out VU Viewer for comics. Various better PDF viewers. Try putting work documents on it. Try putting guitar tab notation on it. Anyone know how do we view music notation?
Things that are pretty essential after rooting:
Startup Auditor. After installing a load of stuff things can startup at boot and drain your battery. This prevents that.
n Button tweak. There's a thread on here somewhere, it's almost essential. Either that or use buttonSaviour
Some things that work well but just as good on a mobile phone:
- WiFi Analyser. You can see wifi strength in realtime.
- calculator. Handy if you don't have a phone with you
- unit converter. Convert metres to feet.
- currency exchange app. If you take the Nook on holiday a currency app is handy.
- encrypt your passwords in a file.
- backup your mobile phone contacts
- ssh tunnel for open wifi networks where you need to check your bank balance
Hope you find this useful!
-j"
One thing that bothers me about e-ink displays is the page turn speed. If they are all about the reading, then this is the one area where they fail. Changing the page takes way too long, and the fact that it goes to all black and then the letters appear is really annoying. That is one think that needs to be fixed before I will get an e-ink device. LCD has the advantage that the page can change instantly, and without jarring your eyes, whereas e-ink is terrible. Also, once higher resolution "retina" displays get cheaper, there will be no resolution difference between the LCD and e-ink displays
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"Chevy offers the electric Volt now"
Please, please, PLEASE - Do NOT fall for the propaganda - let me fix that for you: "Chevy offers the HYBRID Volt now".
The nook Tablet was probably meant as a feature bump/update to the nook Color. They also probably had a higher end tablet. But that one's BOM cost was too high and would be killed by the Kindle Fire. So they probably pulled the planned higher end one, and rebranded the nook Color 'update' as the Tablet. Just a guess.
Yeah, that would be best. I had a bit of luck using a webapp on xerox's website for converting a pdf file. Calibre's converter is too confusing, even with all of the hints that popup when you hover over an option.
"I highly doubt the things the gp was talking about couldn't be done an eInk display."
Can they be done at the same price point?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Just out of curiosity I went looking around and may have found out why you're not getting color e-Ink. I found two devices offering color e-ink displays and they cost $400-$500.
You may want color e-Ink, but are you willing to pay 3x the current Kindle price to get it?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"Also, for reading in bed, there are many covers out that have LED lights. You can buy a clipon LED light for $7. And they work great. They illuminate the text perfectly and evenly."
So in order for my $200 device to work correctly I need to clip a cheap-ass light to it? Wonderful.
As to "Apples" to oranges, they both have screens, the both have Kindle apps, they both allow reading ebooks. You may think they're different, but in many cases they can do the same thing. The only really advantage an e-ink Kindle has is reading in direct sunlight, battery life, and cost.
And with several improvements coming in regard to dual-mode LCD displays and improved power management, the e-ink advantage is fading quickly.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I suggest you try actually using a web browser on a eInk device - any will do, but you can try with Kindle on display in the store. It may be okay in theory, but in practice, it's painful for anything other than quickly looking things up when you have no other web-enabled device - as a last resort.
Kindle is a "content consumption device" that targets a very narrow niche - books - but does it extremely well. It's a good thing for what it does, and many people are happy with it, but a lot more people want something that can handle more than books.
Kindle Fire is a "content consumption device" that targets music, video and online shopping in addition to books, and directed at those people for whom Kindle is not enough. It makes sense for Amazon to go ahead with this, now that they have confirmed that the business model of making a device as cheap as possible, and making money off purchases made with that device, is viable for them.
Page turn speed is subjective; I see a few people complaining about it, but, in truth, it's much faster on modern "pearl" eInk displays than it used to be 2-3 years ago, and most seem to be perfectly content with it. I've read several dozen books from my Kindle 3 by now, and it never annoyed me.
Resolution-wise, though, eInk does not have any advantages, even today. Kindle has a 6" 600x800 screen - there are many LCD devices that can beat that already.
So it's Apple's fault that Wheaton didn't back up his music? WTF?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Here, try Portable Quest.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
I don't get this comment - I read PDFs on my Kindle all the time. what better support would you like - color?
"...it seems the bet choice in terms of convenience and user experience is using Amazon and Barnes and Noble's reader software on an Apple device."
Isn't it great that we live in a world where vendors provide open platforms that don't try to lock us into a proprietary ecosystem? Oh...