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Barnes & Noble Has Been Quietly Refreshing Its Nook Hardware (itworld.com)

Posted by timothy on from the nook-nook-who's-there-samsung dept.

itwbennett writes: Peter Smith writes that he 'had more or less written off the Nook when Barnes & Noble farmed hardware duties out to Samsung.' But now that Amazon is aiming for the low end with its downgraded Fire tablet line, Barnes & Noble has an opportunity to 'carve out a niche on the higher end of things,' says Smith. And so it has been quietly moving in that direction. Yesterday, Venture Beat wrote about the newly (and stealthily) launched $250 Samsung Galaxy Tab E Nook. As Smith notes, 'the specs for this new tablet aren't anything special,' which might explain the stealthy launch, except that another, pricier Nook tablet apparently came out a month ago (again, according to VentureBeat), the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Nook.

3 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. I never had a problem with their hardware by taustin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I gave up on B&N when they became actively hostile to their own users. Removing download links for epubs, playing games to keep you from getting it any other way, changing from their "social encryption" to randomly generated keys, all for the specific purpose of making it impossible to keep an archive of your purchases, so that you have to rely on B&N to reload stuff if you replace a device (and you can only do so on their devices, or using their reader). All while losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and looking like their were going out of business any day now. Fuck 'em.

    I hate Amazon's business model on ebooks, but it's still better than B&N shitting all over me.

  2. Wot no Eink? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If it does not have eink and a battery life in months, surely it is not actually an eBook? Its just an also-ran tablet with an app. I have one of those already.

    I am a nerd.

    I want a black and white screen 1280x1024, with a physical keyboard and some type of navigation.

    Sure I could use it to read "catch 22", but the real world use is to have all the service manuals and wiring diagrams where I can take them on site and use them. paper ones need a couple of drawing cabinets (bigger than 4-draw filing cabinets), and colour displays time out just when you are managing to finally figure out whether it was the blue/green wire or the green/blue wire that deactivates the detonator.

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  3. Color E-Ink? by camperdave · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it waterproof, color, full-sunlight readable, rapid transition, low power, e-ink technology? Or is it simply some crippled tablet?

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!