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Barnes & Nobles Joins eReader Party With Dual Screened Nook

Posted by Daniel Shain

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Barnes & Nobles has gotten in good on the eReader game with their brand new Nook. The new Nook features a secondary touchscreen as well as some shiny new features, and has instantly become a hot item.

The Nook, which recently became available for pre-order, is Barnes & Noble's answer to Amazon's Kindle. If you don't think this was released explicitly to trump the industry leader in as many ways as possible, a quick glance at Nook's website quickly reveals this, as the "Product Comparison" page is just pitting the Nook against the aforementioned device from Amazon.

The Nook, at $259, is cheaper than the Kindle, at $279, and looks like it has more features too. One thing it doesn't have though is the Amazon eBook store, although they emphasize they do have over 1,000,000 titles available. Anyway, on to what makes the Nook noteworthy.

An excellent 3.5" display is first and foremost. Not only does it use an E Ink® Vizplex electronic paper display (same as Kindle) for clarity, the display goes into new territory for eReaders with color and touchscreen capability. It also features that second screen below the first. Now, when I first heard there would be 2 screens on the Nook, I imagined an unnecessarily complex folding display akin to a real paper book (am I the only one?). Of course, it's nothing like this, and the small screen below is essentially used for browsing titles - click a small image of the book below, and it will pop up on the larger screen above.

Moving onto the hardware, the Nook has a few other goodies for us. It features both 3G Wireless (from AT&T) and WiFi, promising free online features for all users who use the Nook in a B&N store. Memory starts at 2GB but there is a MircoSD slot for expanding your storage further. The battery is rated to last for about 10 days offline use on a single charge - below Kindle's 14 days, but you're getting that color screen. Additionally, the Nook will work as an MP3 player (there is a built in mono speaker or a headphone jack), and there is micro USB support for EPUB, PDF and MP3 support.

Software ain't bad either - apparently, with LendMe, you can lend out a book for up to 14 days, no charge. The reader will also support bookmarking, highlighting, and note taking as well. B&N also touts this as the first Android reader out there, for whatever that's worth to you.

It's nice to see improvement in the eReader world. Personally, I know I am excited about this category of electronics, since I ride the subway to work every day and would love to be able to easily read a book with one hand. For me though, although it's nice to see a bevy of improved features, I can't wait for prices to come down. Although Kindle has been coming down slowly and the Nook is under even that (not to mention Sony's reader for $199), it still makes too much sense just to go to my local library or bookstore if I want to read, especially when that actually provides a more comfortable reading experience for those rare situations where you can actually use two hands.

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