Nook Reviews & A Grain Of Salt

Initial Nook reviews were somewhat average. Many gave it high marks for innovative features, but almost everybody agreed the Kindle was more mature, and therefore perhaps more desirable. Only David Pogue lashed out against it (and his readers in turn lashed out against him).

Others were more balanced (each word is a separate review).

So where did David Pogue go astray? Not every review I linked to was positive. Not every one declared it the winner in the Kindle wars. But Pogue especially hated it. On the basis of that review, I spent some time at the Barnes & Noble store playing with a Nook, and found at the very least, his claim of a three second page turn was not true.

Several other complaints were valid, and close to deal breakers. But now v1.1 has shipped as a free wireless update, which addresses the following:

• Improved page turn and formatting of downloaded eBooks
• Improved startup time for My Library, The Daily, and Settings
• Immediate launch of the reader upon choosing Select from The Daily and My Library, for books and subscription issues that have already been downloaded; otherwise the book detail page is displayed, with Download as the first option.
• Exclusive Barnes & Noble in-store content and promotions: when a customer enters a store, your nook will recognize the location and display the Barnes & Noble logo and welcome message, as well as special articles and offers.
• Elimination of the page skipping that has occurred in certain PDB eBooks
• Status bar (battery indicator, signal indicator, and clock) is displayed in reader
• Overall system improvements

I don't know what "Overall system improvements" means, but the rest are all good for sure. It's also nice to see the updates coming voluntarily. The Kindle DX supported PDF natively - but the Kindle never did. That is, until the Nook was announced, and then suddenly and finally, PDF support came to Kindle 2/the International Kindle. It doesn't work very well, but one has to wonder what made them hurry up and deliver a new feature for the first time (previous updates were bug fixes).

If the pace of updates and improvements continues then the objections will drop, and the Nook will probably continue to be sold out for months at a time.