10 Reasons You Should Pick up a Nook

As expected, B&N finally launched its e-book reader yesterday, and it has already generated quite a buzz. Of course, when you call your e-book reader “the most advanced” on the market, people listen, right? In reality, people are excited about some of the advantages that Nook has over Kindle 2.0. Nook may not have the backing of Amazon’s e-book store behind its back, but it B&N’s selection of books is not too shabby either. If you take a look at the specs, you can see that B&N has done a lot of work to make Nook as formidable e-book reader as anything out on the market. Is Nook better than Kindle? That’s tough to say. But here are 10 reasons you should pick up a Nook:

• Android OS: the most exciting feature of Nook is its use of Android as its OS. It’s hard to guess whether Android apps will be supported on Nook but it’s nice to have the option in the future.
• LendMe: being able to lend your book to others is a huge plus. Being able to lend across multiple devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Nook, …) is by itself a good reason to buy Nook.
• Color LCD: yet another innovative feature that lets you go through your content more effectively. I wish the whole screen was in color, but this is a good start.
• Navigation: this is an area that Nook has a big edge over Kindle. It’s just much easier to navigate content through a touch-screen display. Amazon’s navigation looks old in comparison to Nook.
• Wireless: both devices come with wireless functionality. Amazon has both AT&T and Sprint on its side. Nook take advantage of AT&T to let you stay connected on the go. But Nook supports WiFi and Kindle doesn’t.
• Stores: Amazon doesn’t have a physical store. B&N does, and it offers free wireless for your Nook too. Not a deal maker but nice to have.
• Memory Expansion: Amazon took a step backwards when it removed SD support on Kindle 2.0. But Nook allows you to expand your e-book readers’ memory by up to 16 GB.
• Content: it’s very close between B&N and Amazon here. Both have many titles for you to choose from. As someone who’s not used B&N for years, it’d be hard to invest in B&N’s reader. But there are a lot of people who enjoy purchasing books from B&N. And you will get over 250,000 of free titles on your Nook as well. Nook has better support for PDF as well.
• Synchronization: Amazon made a big deal of Kindle on iPhone, but with Nook, you can sync across multiple devices easily, and that will include your Blackberry as well.
• Customization: B&N makes it easy to customize your Nook as you wish. You can replace your back-cover easily. The same can be said about your screen-saver. Not a deal maker by any means.

Nook will be available for $259, which is not too bad. e-book readers in general need to be much cheaper in the future, but Nook is on the right track.