Slippery Jim 65 Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Purchased a Nook Color during recent U.S. visit. This is the Barnes & Nobel e-book reader, but I bought it for use as a mobile media player & web surfer for ski and other trips. The 7-inch screen is excellent and it plays MPEG4 videos so I've already loaded in a bunch of movies for forthcoming Niseko stay. The base operating system is Android, with a B&N front-end. There is supposed to be an upgrade to Android 2.0 shortly, but no definite timetable for that. This is WiFi only, no 3G available, but that's probably good enough for my use -- no problem getting a connection and checking a few things at a Renoir coffee shop yesterday. The on-screen keyboard is usable, barely, when horizontal -- obviously inferior to the larger iPad screen for input but OK for short replies to e-mail. B&N fails badly when it comes to an international outlook, however, as it requires a U.S. billing address to set up an account for buying content. Absurdly, you can't even download FREE books without setting up an account with a U.S. billing address! And I couldn't buy any books in the store to load into the Nook. FUBAR, to say the least. I'll probably wind up buying a Kindle if/when I decide to digitize most of my book-buying. Still, for $250 it's a very nice, pocketable media/web device and when the Android update comes thru will probably offer even more functionality. Link to post Share on other sites
grungy-gonads 54 Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Never heard of that one. Link to post Share on other sites
Slippery Jim 65 Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 B&N has had a monchrome Nook for a while, but only intro'd the color screen model recently (past 6 months?) For the price, it's a winner for what I need it to do, but I'd still go for a Kindle for e-book reading. Link to post Share on other sites
panhead_pete 27 Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Im loving my Kindle, but if it was color it would be the real bad boy of e-readers. Link to post Share on other sites
bobby12 0 Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 it seems kindle has similar issues with not being able to download anything if you are in the wrong country. Link to post Share on other sites
Slippery Jim 65 Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 The $189 Kindle 3G is supposed to work in 100+ countries, though prices may differ a bit depending on copyright agreements. Link to post Share on other sites
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