Hello blogosphere.  It feels good to be back.  I got caught up in a new semester and all the work that goes along with it and haven’t been able to write.  I have good news though; my Nook e-book reader arrived yesterday.  I was quite surprised.  It wasn’t even supposed to ship until the 15th.  Imagine my happiness when it arrived at my door instead.

I had been neglecting my family recently because of semester preparations, so I couldn’t open the package right away.  Instead, I put it on my desk and waited a few hours.  When they went they went for a walk, I tore in.  It was kind of anti-climatic when I did.  When I got the shipping box open, I was happy to find everything inside.  It comes in really pretty packaging; however, that same packaging, like the ones they love to use these days (think toys…they come in that heat sealed plastic with wire twist ties, and plastic zip ties), is horrendous. It took me almost 20 minutes to cajole my Nook out of its package.  First you have to fight through the hermetically sealed plastic, then the lexan-like box, and finally the plastic tray the Nook is cradled in.  It really is pretty; however, overkill considering what it takes to get the Nook out.  Once I did though….

The Nook is beautiful.  It has a sleek look, rounded corners, beveled bezel with a continuous smooth look (even where the page advance buttons are), and don’t forget the color touch screen at the bottom.  Once I put it into the green Italian leather cover I bought…forget about it!

First things first, I chose the Nook over the KIndle for a few reasons I discussed here.  To save you the trip, I’ll briefly review them.  First, I liked that the Nook allows users to expand the memory by installing micro-SD cards.  (You can go up 16GB.) I assumed the Nook engineers were smart enough to put the card slot in a highly accessible place like at the bottom of the unit or on the side.  Unfortunately, I quickly found out after I ordered mine, that the card slot is actually located under the back cover where the battery is located.  I was greatly disappointed with this because I was planning to save documents onto SD cards and them plug them into the Nook to read at my convenience (mostly for student essays and other written work–after all, the Nook supports PDFs natively–see reason two).  But putting the card slot under the back cover put that plan to rest.  I am not going to remove the back cover every few days to get my SD card out.  Ultimately, the back cover isn’t designed to be taken off regularly and takes some effort to do so.

The second reason I chose the Nook, was because it supported PDF, ePUB, and MP3 formats natively.  Unlike the Kindle, you don’t need third-party software to convert files to make them render or play on the Nook.  This was important because I did not want to be forced to buy all my books exclusively from B&N.  I like having choices.  In fact, and this leads into my last reason for choosing the Nook, my initial plan was to read and reread many of the classics (and other texts) that can be found on Google Books and in the public domain free of charge; a service that comes with the Nook.  I guess choosing Android gave them access to Google’s collection.  Don’t get my wrong though, I’m not against buying books and probably will purchase my share.  However, I do plan to read what’s free most often.

The Nook has gotten mixed reviews so far.  Many find the touch-screen interface laggy and slow.  I’m not much of a touch-screen kind of guy, so I’m almost certain the lagginess won’t bother me too much.  As long as I can use the interface, download books, and read them, I’ll be happy.  So far, so good.  I have already downloaded five books and am about 70 pages into one of my favorites, Don Quixote, already.

The one thing I was most concerned about up until this morning was the Nook’s ability to connect and be managed by Ubuntu.  Because my original plan to swap SD cards regularly was dashed by the placement of the card slot, I had to bank on the Nook working with my Linux boxes.  B&N has software downloads for MS and Mac that allow both systems to download, render, and mange eBooks from B&N.  Unfortunately, they don’t offer similar software for Linux users.  I was a little concerned that the Nook would need such software to allow management from a computer terminal.  Luckily though, I can confirm that I connected my Nook to my Thinkpad this morning and Ubuntu recognized it as a mass storage device.  A file manager dialog opened as soon as I plugged in the USB cable.  I could see the individual folders on my Nook.  I was able to move two PDF files from my hard drive to my Nook without a hitch.  One file had a lot of pictures and the other was basically a text file I created in OpenOffice and converted to PDF.

The first file opened; however the formatting was not correct.  The captions under the pictures moved and the alignment of the photos changed.  The pictures rendered, and they looked like photos in a black and white newspaper–nothing spectacular, but acceptable.  The second file also opened without a problem; however the formatting also changed a bit too.  Text that was center aligned on the original file moved to the left, and the numerals in the header did not render at all.  Although many would be disappointed by this, I wasn’t.  The main reason I would be opening a PDF on my Nook would be to read a student essay during times I was not sitting at a terminal.  My plan was never to do a lot of editing and commenting while on my Nook.  When I grade student essays, I like to read them at least a couple of times.  Being able to convert them to PDFs and render them on my Nook will allow me to read them while I wait for my kids or wife in the car or while I commute to work in the morning.  I will be able to do a lot of my first reads during these times, thus allowing me to do the more involved readings sooner.

I did not move any music files, but when I do, I’ll let you know how it goes.  Unfortunately, many of my favorite music files are in OGG format, so I’ll have to convert them to MP3 first before they have any hope of working on my Nook.

I feel fairly confident that I’ll be happy with my purchase even after the fabled iTablet is released in the next couple of months. My electronic arsenal will still be free of panes of glass and forbidden fruits!

By the way, I received another cool product recently; in fact, I’m using it right now.  I’ll be writing about my impressions of it soon.  (I’ll give you a hint; my Lenovo multimedia keyboard began failing about four weeks ago, and I went old school!)  Happy new year!