My Introduction to Electronic Book Readers

It Started with the Amazon.com Kindle

I bought a Kindle., one with WIFI but not 3G, with the soon-to-be-ironic model name: latest generation ($139). I was surprised that it completely changed my reading habits. Being able to change the font size quickly has allowed me to read without glasses, and being able to control the line width seems to me to have sped up my reading.

What I like when Adding Content (unordered)

What I like when Reading with a Kindle (unordered)

Drawbacks (again, unordered)

Feature Wishlist

  1. Touchscreen (I'd pay $50 for that) - zoom/pan/rotate would be much easier
  2. Color (I'd pay $25 for that)

Then I Got the Color Nook (Barnes&Noble)

My first impression with the Nook Color (NC) was that it was about the same size as the Kindle, but heavier. Instead of a tiny keyboard, data entry is on the touch screen. Instead of a reflective gray-scale display, the NC has a backlit LCD screen that is much prettier. NC screen is shiney, so reading in sunlight can be difficult.

The basic model is similar to the Kindle. Search the store for books and buy almost immediately, or get a sample for free. When reading a book, I can look up words in a dictionary, but I can't look up words that are in the dictionary. I can pinch-zoom the dictionary popup window to control the font size; but I need to go through a few menus to change the size of text I am reading. It seems the the software for reading a book page is completely different than the software for using the dictionary.

Magazines are very different on the two devices due to their screens, input methods, and user interface design. Colorful magazines look much prettier on the NC, but the user interface design made me drop all subscriptions on the NC, keeping them on the Kindle. With the NC, I could view a full page, ut not large enough to read it comfortably (I refuse to put on reading glasses). I can pinch-zoom the page, but not large enough to read it comfortably. I can use the article view, which lets me read the article text and images in a narrow center column. I can scroll down the article column, and side-swipe the next/previous articles. I can change the font size of the article view using a menu, but the range of font sizes is from miniscule to slightly large, and changing the font size does not make images such as graphs or charts any larger. Even though the page images are too small, they still add up to a large download, and with no progress indicator, the blank screen can be disconcerting.

Issues with the Readers

User Interface