I purchased a couple of years ago an ebook reader, the EZReader Pro. It worked fine, but I discoverfd I adopted too soon and the device while perfectly functional doesn’t meet all the needs I have for a good portable reader.
I know that one day I want to get myself a tablet, the question is which one? I’m striking the Amazon Fire from consideration because as far as an ereader goes it is far too limiting. I want to be able to buy my ebooks from anywhere I feel like and not just from Amazon.com. I’m also striking the lesser tablets who have priced themselves similar to the iPad and look to be losing in their vain attempt to gain market share. That leaves me with the Nook tablet and the iPad.
I see advantages and disadvantages to each and so I am torn.
iPad is an apple product and I have been very happy with Apple products. I own an imac for my desktop computing, a MacBook Pro from my mobile laptop computing, and an iPhone for communication, GPS turn-by-turn navagation and as a music player. As you can see Apple has a home with me. Getting an iPad would mean seamless integration with my existing digital ecosystem. I have iTunes for my music, and the library of my digital copies of feature films I have purchased, so the iPad as a media device would make a lot of sense. However I don’t use media devices that often. I don’t watch movies on the go, and the iPhone would remain my principle music delivery system. The iPhone does have a large screen which would be ever so nice for the full sized PDFs I have of a number of documents.
The Nook Tablet is more geared towards ebook reading with a sideline of tablet computing. It has a smaller screen than the iPad and far few apps are available for the device. However it reads all the formats I need, including PDFs, is lighter and held in one hand easier, and cost less than half the price of an iPad. It too can play media, but with a smaller screen it is inferior in that job to the iPad. I supposes is the extra functions of the iPad worth the doubling of cost? At this juncture it doesn’t look like it to me.
pre-order
ing is good, not all book sales count the same towards helping an author out. The best sales are pre-orders, the next best is book purchased the week it comes out.A. went through a similar debate before getting a NOOK color. (We got ours just before the new model came out – naturally!) I run Netflix through it and have no complaints about picture – but the sound is a bit weak. Since we have two desktop computers and a laptop, we really only needed the tablets as e-readers. I have been very happy with my NOOK and A. likes it too. They were our first ereaders and adaptation from paper has been a non-issue. (You won’t be dealing with that, being accustomed to ebooks already.) I have not tried music through it, though a friend has just bought the model you will be looking at for the purpose of downloading audiobooks. I have had one less than pleasant experience – when I pre-purchased “Timeless”, I expected the book to download as soon as I had the tablet turned on in our wireless network without any real effort. This did not happen. I tried to actively download it through the wireless network. If this is possible, I could not figure out how to do it. I had to physically attach the NOOK to our desktop computer and instruct the library to download it. What a pain!! No more pre-purchasing for me!! (PS – my school offers some educational publications for free. I have downloaded one and, aside from the loss of some navigational features, it worked without issue, although, again, I had to physically hook up the device to the computer. Since the publication was free, I do not care about that part. It was the purchased book that felt as if it should have been more seamless.)