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Ebooks and Ereaders

Ereader review: Samsung Galaxy S2 Nook, by Barnes and Noble

Gummy Drop on the S2

Gummy Drop on the S2

Those of you who’ve been following me for a while will know I’ve been eying Barnes and Noble askance for some time. I’ve taken major issue with their website thanks to their last round of changes, enough that I haven’t bought an ebook from them since. And I’ve also been looking askance at some of the changes they’ve been implementing in their brick-and-mortar stores as well.

Why did I buy another Nook tablet?

Given this, one would be justified in wondering why exactly I’d want to pick up another tablet from them. Simple: I wanted to upgrade from using the last tablet I’d bought from them, the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, because it was still stuck on Android KitKat and I wanted something with a bit more power to it.

Plus, B&N has been running a trade-in promotion that let me bring in my old Nook HD and trade it in for a $50 credit off the price of a new device. So I decided to take them up on that offer, while wiping the Galaxy Tab 4 back to factory defaults so that I could give it to Dara and let her use it as an upstairs web-browsing type device when she didn’t feel like breaking out the laptop. (And also because we can get all Star-Trek:-The Next-Generation-y with the ability to just pick up a tablet and do stuff in our house.)

Thanks to the credit, not to mention the VISA gift card I’d gotten from the day job as my last work anniversary gift, I was able to get a new tablet from B&N more cheaply than I could from anywhere else. And even though I find Samsung frustrating in how long it takes them to deploy upgrades to the Android operating system, I did like the Tab 4. After playing around with an S2 in a B&N recently, I decided I’d probably like that tablet, too.

Which, at the end of the day, pretty much means I liked the idea of having a new Samsung Galaxy tablet more than I disliked buying anything else from B&N. So there ya go.

Main things that I like

So here’s what I like about the S2. You can take this as you like, if you want to consider buying a Samsung tablet–whether via B&N, via Samsung, or via some other vendor.

One, I like the size. It’s not quite as big as my iPad, and it’s ever so slightly lighter, which means a bit less weight in the backpack on the commute. And that’s always a good thing. It’s a little bit bigger than the Tab 4, but that’s offset by how it’s also thinner. Even with an 8-inch screen, it’s still well within the range of device sizes that are comfortable for me to handle.

Two, the processing ability is better than the Tab 4. Which means, for my purposes, that’s it’s a better gaming tablet. So I can happily play Gummy Drop and Dungeon Boss on it. Sometimes with both running at once, similar to what I can do on the iPad, a trick I don’t think I could have pulled off on the Tab 4.

Three, the adaptive screen is kind of neat, though I don’t know how much of this functionality is the tablet and how much of it is coming in with Android Lollipop. By adaptive screen, I mean that there are settings that can automatically adjust the brightness and color saturation for certain apps under certain conditions. I’ve actually turned this off since I find that it makes Gummy Drop and Dungeon Boss both look over saturated–but I appreciate that the tech is there. There are other settings I’ll have to try on it, like Reading Mode.

Four, it comes by default with 32GB on board, which means I no longer have to rely upon having an SD card in the device to carry a suitable portion of my digital library with me. Which also means a bit of a performance improvement as well, since the OS doesn’t have to read stuff off the card.

Engaging with content

In terms of engaging with content, the experience is much the same for me as it was on the Tab 4. This is, after all, a full-on Android tablet, so I can install whatever apps I want on it. So I’ve got the full fleet of book apps that I currently need for my arsenal–not only the Nook apps that come bundled with this build of the OS, but also Kobo, Kindle, Overdrive, and Calibre Companion. (Still working on deciding which app is best for reading my indie books that aren’t immediately accessible via the other apps.)

I’m not planning on using this as a device to watch movies or TV–that’s what I’ve got the iPad for. (All the video I buy is on my Apple account, anyway.) So I can’t really comment on whether this device would be good for that. If I get a chance to try that out, though, I will update this post with that data.

It was super-easy to get my previous apps back onto it, I’ll have to give it that. This is all on Google, though, since the Tab 4 had been backing up to my Google account. So when I set up the S2, it was all “OH HEY do you want me to restore everything from that backup?” So props for that.

Possibly of interest for my writing

The S2 came bundled with Microsoft Office apps for Android. To wit: there are now Microsoft Office apps for Android. And a bit of playing around with Word showed me that the free apps, even without an Office 365 subscription, will finally let you actually do things like edit and save documents. And, they’re even acknowledging the presence of other cloud services besides Microsoft’s. The Word app on this thing seems perfectly happy to talk to not only OneDrive, but also Google Drive and Dropbox.

And once I actually opened one of my manuscript files in it, I found out that the free app does actually give me access to the Track Changes functionality of Word. Which, aside from the ability to just write and save documents, is what I use Word for.

All of which tells me that I could actually write on this thing in a pinch. Whether I’d want to edit on it without an actual keyboard is another matter entirely, though. To date, I’ve found that if I need to edit a story, I really need a full keyboard and mouse pointer to do it smoothly.

But hey, the apps are here, and a bit of googling on the part of a coworker indicated that non-B&N Samsungs are also coming bundled with these apps. Which means you’d get them if you bought the device from somewhere besides B&N. Which is worth thinking about in general if you’re in the market for an Android device, and you have any need to do work in Microsoft Office on it. Especially if you’re a writer. (I think I have fodder here for an entire other blog post!)

Accessories

Since this is a tablet I expect to be carrying around on my commute, I did actually buy a cover for it as well from the B&N store I went into. Sure, it’s a Nook-branded cover, but I did like the color scheme on the one I chose. It lets me look at the tablet in both orientations. And it’s got a nice little magnet flap to hold the thing closed.

In short

Should you buy this tablet? So far it seems lovely to me, a reasonably small, light device that nonetheless has a decent amount of power for what I need it to do. I’d say that if your device needs are similar to mine, this one’s worth looking at.

Should you buy it from B&N? That’s another matter entirely. It’s worth considering if you have an older Nook you can trade in on. But if you’re not already a B&N customer, you may well be better served buying directly from Samsung or from other stores near you that sell electronics.

March 1, 2016 by
Ebooks and Ereaders

For folks who keep hitting my site looking for Kobo Mini battery data

I’ve turned off URL archiving of my tweet history–but I had been getting a lot of hits on one tweet I did about my Kobo Mini and finding a battery for it. This suggests to me that a lot of folks out there are having the same problem I did, which is to say, you have a Kobo Mini with battery problems. So I thought I’d put up a little post talking about what I did. The tweet people kept hitting didn’t exactly have much in the way of useful data, after all.

When I originally got the Mini I saw a lot of weird behavior with it, as described in my Mini vs. Nook SimpleTouch post, and the followup on Mini vs. Nook SimpleTouch post. It had issues with battery life, and would often lose track of where I was with any given book, or whether it had synced stuff back to Kobo’s mothership in case I wanted to pick up reading a book on something else (like the desktop app, or my phone). I eventually realized that a lot of what I was seeing could be traced to a bad battery. A little bit of googling suggested other Mini owners had had the same problem.

The trick is, actually finding a battery to replace the one in my device. I eventually had to have Dara order me one from a seller on eBay. The seller was in Toronto, so it took a while for the battery to actually get to me. But it did arrive and it did work. I’m not using my Kobo Mini much now, but as of the last few times I played with it, it did indeed appear stable. So if you’re having issues with your device, I’d recommend you do a scan through eBay and see if other sellers have batteries available.

Of course, if the only available sellers are in North America and you’re not, I agree that this presents some problems. To wit, the likelihood that you’ll risk postage costs being more than the battery is actually worth–at which point you’ll need to ask yourself whether it’s worth it to try to find a replacement battery, or just get a new device. That, I suppose, will depend on how much you like the Mini as an ereading device.

(You will note that I’m no longer actively using mine; I’m a power reader and I have found that the Mini doesn’t really suit my reading needs anymore. So if anybody wants to buy mine, hey, talk to me!)

All that said… if you do actually find a battery, what then do you do with it? Well, I found it reasonably easy to take my device apart and install the newly acquired battery. So if you’re not afraid to disassemble an ereader and you have the appropriate tools, go for it. I found this tutorial on Kobo surgery helpful.

Let me know if you have any questions!

May 6, 2015 by
Ebooks and Ereaders

Ereader review: Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 7.0, by Barnes and Noble

Since I got a bonus from work, I have elected to add another ereader to my collection: this time, one of the new Samsung Galaxy Nooks from Barnes and Noble. Since I’m an established B&N member, I was able to get one at a bit of a discount, and the devices were on sale aside from that this past weekend as well. So I got one for considerably cheaper than normal.

Y’all may recall that I acquired a Nook HD not terribly long ago, and by and large, I rather liked it. And for those of you keep score, I have a Kindle Fire HDX too. So how does the new Samsung Nook 7 stack up against those?

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December 15, 2014 by
Ebooks and Ereaders

Ereader review: Kindle Fire HDX, by Amazon

So this is kinda lollertastic: Dara and I have a credit card that we’ve had via the University of Kentucky credit union, pretty much ever since Dara graduated college. This card generates points that we can trade in for swag every so often, a thing we tend to forget about. Recently the card folks reminded Dara that she’d accumulated a LOT of points, so she and I blew a bunch of them on getting some stuff.

And because one of the things available was a Kindle Fire in a couple different flavors, I decided, what the hell, I’ll get one of those! I chose the Kindle Fire HDX, the 7-inch one, on the thought that I could in fact use it for work-related purposes. (Which I can. Since Big Fish ships Android games for both the Amazon and Google Play stores, we do care about Kindle-specific stuff sometimes. And as I write this, I have in fact used the Kindle a few times to test stuff for my day job.)

Here now are my thoughts on this device, behind the fold!

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October 30, 2014 by
Ebooks and Ereaders

Ereader review: The Nook HD, by Barnes and Noble

As y’all know, my day job is QA Engineer at Big Fish Games. But what you may not know, even if you’re a regular player of our stuff, is that we’ve been pushing out hard into the mobile arena–and that now we have not only iOS games, but Android games as well!

I mention this because a) that shiny new Android page of ours was tested by yours truly (woo!), and b) since we’re having more of an emphasis on Android devices at work, I felt it was time for me to acquire one. We have a store of devices to use to test on when I’m at work, but I periodically do work from home. Therefore I wanted a device around to have handy in case I needed to test on it.

Which raised for me the question of what to actually get. So far I’ve had experience with Nexus and Samsung devices, neither of which really stood up and said “buy me”. What I ultimately decided upon was a thing that’ll be useful to me not only as a testing device, but also as an ereader and a tablet: a Nook HD. This is the smaller, 7-inch version of B&N’s current tablet, which I wanted because that particular size is more comfortable to me for reading purposes, and also because I’ve got my still-perfectly-delightful iPad covering the larger 10-inch form factor.

It was rather fun going into the B&N at Pacific Place downtown, where I started experimenting with one of the display models, with my srs bznz Testing Face on. The staffer in charge of selling Nooks took a moment to lock in on me–he was busy delivering his “so, are you interested in buying a tablet?” spiel to another customer when I walked in. But it didn’t take him long to get over to me to start the same spiel. At which point I promptly spieled right back at him as to what I wanted the device for (i.e., web page testing as well as reading, and why yes, I AM a current Nook customer), and to his credit, he immediately went into “oh okay this is an informed consumer” mode. So he cheerfully let me be as I gave serious thought between the smoke-colored model and the white one, and whether I wanted 8GB or 16GB. Final verdict: I got the smoke-colored, 16GB one. This is what it looks like.

(Pics and more behind the fold!)

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June 2, 2014 by
Ebooks and Ereaders

Meet my new Nook!

I’m not normally one for needing to get the next revision of a device I own as soon as it comes out, but in the case of the new Nook Simple Touch, I’ve made an exception. I was interested by it as soon as I heard it was coming, and what finally pushed me over to get a new one was discovering that the software on the original Nooks (now called Nook 1st Edition) is not going to be updated any more after the current rev, 1.6.

So I went out and grabbed one of the new Nooks yesterday. And I’ve gotta say, if you’re interested in the Nook at all as your reader of choice, the new one is a significant improvement over the old.

Cool Things:

  • It’s smaller. The actual screen size is comparable, but since they’ve lost the clunky color touchscreen on the bottom, the overall device is noticeably smaller and a bit lighter as well. This is a win, given all the stuff I typically carry in my backpack.
  • It’s a full touchscreen device now. This was one of the things that always confused me about the first Nook–I’d keep forgetting that I’d have to tap on stuff in the bottom area to navigate around on the device, and would try to tap the e-ink portion of the screen instead. Now you can do that. And so far I’ve found it satisfyingly responsive, especially when turning pages, which actually works a bit better than the page-turning buttons on the side.
  • Big big big win: they’ve combined the B&N and non-B&N book lists. So now all your B&N purchases and all your sideloaded content show up in the same overall index. This means that the Shelves functionality is now much less stupid. I’ll actually use Shelves on it now.
  • They’ve ditched some of the superfluous stuff from the first Nook, like the “Nook Daily” icon I never read anything on, the games, and the browser. I cared absolutely zero about any of these things. I don’t need my ereader to play Sudoku or let me listen to music; I just want to read books on it. What icons are available now, Home, Library, Shop, Search, and Settings, seem much more intuitively arranged to me.
  • The new Nook is significantly, and I mean significantly, less expensive than what I put down for the first one. It’s roughly $140. (But then, the prices on the 1st Edition Nooks have also come down hard, and B&N’s selling those still for cheaper than the new ones. So if your budget is tight, you may still want to look at the old ones. Just be aware that the software on them will not get any further updates.)

  • The page turning buttons have been entirely redesigned. They’re a bit harder to press now but given how they’re set into the sides of the device, they should not have the same problem the first generation devices did with the buttons cracking under extensive use.

Potential minuses for previous Nook owners:

  • PDB support has been dropped. This was mostly a problem for me since I have a couple hundred titles I’d bought from Fictionwise, which only sells in epub format if the titles are DRM-free. So I had to take Certain Steps to get those titles onto the new device. If you’re not a customer of a site that sells in PDB, this’ll be less of an issue.
  • The Shelves functionality is still not as awesome as it could be. I can’t find any immediately obvious way to add a single title to a shelf; what I have to do right now is to edit the overall Shelf and then page through my entire list of books to find the one(s) I want. Given that I have several hundred books on the device, this takes a while! So they really need to add a way to just click on the options for a single book and choose what shelves, if any, you’d like to add it to.
  • If you actually liked the segregation of B&N and non-B&N content, you’ll have to recreate it manually yourself via Shelves. Which, given the previous point, may take you a bit. There were times that I actually kind of liked having the lists separate, just because I like to keep track of what books I bought from what site.
  • While much is being made of the improved screen contrast on the new device, so far I haven’t actually noticed much of a difference. I need to compare in different light conditions though, given that the only place I’ve compared so far was in my usual corner of the couch in the living room and that’s one of the dimmer parts of the house unless the lights are on. More on this as I have it.

  • This device doesn’t talk 3G, so if that’s a dealbreaker for you, be aware. It’s wi-fi only.

Other stuff you may or may not like:

  • Better selection of fonts for displaying a book’s text. The old Nook had only three to choose from; this one’s got six.
  • There’s new social networking functionality that lets you hook into your Facebook or Twitter accounts to share data about what books you’re reading. You can also import Google contacts onto it.
  • Relatedly, there’s also a new “Nook Friends” thing they’re setting up where you can make a little social network with other Nook-owning friends. This is supposed to let you see each other’s reading lists, lend books, and such. This will be interesting, I think, only if it means you can loan books more than once. One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from ebook readers all over the Net is the stupidity of being able to loan a book just once; I hope they have addressed this. I haven’t found out yet though.

  • The settings for connecting to a Wi-Fi network seem better laid out; it was a lot easier to see what networks the new Nook had already memorized.

So overall: a significant win, I feel. userinfosolarbird and I will probably amuse ourselves with rootkitting the old Nook, unless somebody expresses interest in buying it off of me; if anybody wants to, let me know!

June 13, 2011 by
Ebooks and Ereaders

How to read ebooks, Part 6: How to check out library ebooks

This is part 6 of my posts on how to read ebooks. Here I’ll get into how to check out ebooks from libraries that support that, and what you need to be able to do this. Basically, you will need two things: Adobe Digital Editions, and an account with the library of your choice (which must be set up to do ebook checkouts).

I mentioned ADE in my previous ebooks post, so will just briefly repeat here that ADE is supported on Windows and Mac computers. (Linux users, you’ll have to run it via WINE, I fear.) It supports both EPUB and PDF files, and the list of ereaders it supports is over here. The major ereaders I’m aware of that ADE supports are the nook, the Sony readers, and the Kobo.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: the Kindle is NOT supported by ADE, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s because of Amazon using its own proprietary DRM format. So right now, Kindle users aren’t able to use ADE to check out library books. This may change if the Kindle picks up EPUB support, though. Kindle users, if any of you are aware of alternate means through which you can check out ebooks, drop me a comment and let me know!)

Now, in order to be able to check out books from an ebook-capable library, you will of course need an account with that library. You’ll want to check out the website of your local library and see if they have a “Downloads” or “Digital” or “Ebooks” section, and if so, you should be able to follow their procedures for getting an account set up. (Some libraries may allow out-of-area access to users who want to check things out over the net as well, so even if you don’t live in the area of a library you’re interested in, find their website anyway. You may still be able to get an account.)

Once you have ADE set up on your computer and an account with the library you want to get content from, you’ll basically want to follow the library website’s directions for how to check out a digital book. You’ll want to look for either EPUB or PDF files, depending on what ebook format you’re better able to read.

What you’ll wind up downloading though will be a stub file, not that actual book. Once you’ve downloaded that file, you’ll want to open ADE and then doubleclick the stub file download, so that ADE can then open up the actual book with the timestamp on it that says how long you’re allowed to have it. (Note: On my system, I’ve had to be careful to open ADE first, otherwise I get error messages that claim I need to download an update I don’t actually need. Your mileage may vary depending on your system.)

Once ADE has the book, you can read it right there on your computer. However, if you want to copy it down to your ereader, you can also do that via ADE. If your ereader is plugged into one of your computer’s USB ports, ADE should see it (one more note: you may need to plug in the device first and then launch ADE; I have that problem with my nook). And if ADE can see it, you should be able to just copy the library book right down to the device.

And then you can read! You should be able to use ADE to delete the file off the device when you’re done with it, and you can also use ADE to “return” the book as well.

For the next post in this series, I’ll talk a bit about various technical differences between devices I’m familiar with, and how difficult it is to get books onto them.

December 15, 2010 by