A Tale of Two Kindles and a NOOK: Part 2 - The NOOKcolor

A few weeks after I delivered my dad's new Kindle, I was talking to my son on the phone, telling him about Dad's learning to use his Kindle and how much I was enjoying mine.  He said, "Well, actually, I need to tell you that I have purchased a NOOKcolor for myself."

He went on to explain his reasons for the additional purchase.  Primarily, it had to do with the larger touch-screen, the fact that everything is in full color, and the wireless web access.  (You can access the web through the Kindle, but it is difficult to manuever, due to the smaller screen size and the lack of the touch-screen.)  His enthusiasm was contagious.  I decided to explore the NOOKcolor on the Barnes and Noble website.

First, the color is beautiful.  It's especially nice for cookbooks, decorating books, anything with photographs or color illustrations.  (You can also enlarge and zoom in on the photos.)  I remember when we went from black and white TV to the first color sets.  The color was not good.   This experience was more like going from watching one of today's movies on a black and white TV to watching it in color in high definition.  I was sold on the color!

Barnes and Noble offers the option of purchasing subscriptions to many magazines, as does Amazon for the Kindle.  Of course, the color makes a huge difference with a lot of the magazines.  Another option for the NOOKcolor and the Kindle is to purchase the most recent issue of magazines and newspapers individually.  This is an option that we will enjoy when we're on vacation or when a special event or issue comes up that we want to explore, without purchasing an entire subscription.

Next, some books are interactive.  For example, some cookbooks have demonstration videos embedded in the text.  You just touch the screen on the NOOK to play them.   Brilliant!  I can have my NOOKcolor right there with me in the kitchen (in a protected area) and use the demos as I go through the recipes.  Also, some of the color children's books have interactive segments in the illustrations.  The child can touch a ferris wheel car, for example, and the car will rock.

By the way, the screen can be turned sideways to read the children's books and there is a "read to me" feature that the child can choose to listen to the book as the pages are turned.

The touch screen is very nice, but there is a learning curve.  I had no experience with touch screens (I don't have a smart phone) and am just now getting more confident using mine.  It just takes practice.

The web browsing capability is also very nice; the touch screen makes it easier to use and there are some other extra bells and whistles like the ability to preset your social media and e-mail for easy access.

Here is the final selling point for me:  My library system has books available to check out on e-readers from its website.  The NOOK is one of the e-readers that will accept the borrowed books; the Kindle is not.  This is a major money-saver and is what really made me decide to buy the NOOK.

The bottom line is that I will use both, and I'll be using them for different functions and for different reasons  (just as I will continue to read the traditional book).  The Kindle is a good basic reader with features that will appeal to people my age and older:  it's lightweight, simple to learn, has buttons rather than the more senstitive touch screen, the screen doesn't smudge easily, and it can be read in bright sunlight.  The NOOKcolor has, of course, beautiful color; touch screen; interactive functions; easier web access; and a larger reading screen (than my Kindle -- I understand that the Kindle DX has a larger screen) AND allows me to download e-books from my library.  Both the Kindle and the NOOK have many features in common that make my reading an even more wonderful and varied pleasure than it has been.

I would recommend, of course, that you visit the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites to learn more about both devices, especially if you are in the market for one (or both).  Happy reading!

Annie

A Tale of Two Kindles and a Nook: Part 1 - The Kindles

I thought that I had found the "sweet spot" in regard to my ever-present need to have books and magazines available to read.  My library provides a "book box" two miles from my home, where I can pick up and drop off books that I've reserved through the system website.  I also have three branches within a twenty minute drive, for those times I want to browse.  I subscribe to a dozen magazines and look forward to their arrival each month, and I have a personal library with enough books to keep me happy into my eighties.  I have carried suitcases full of books on the plane ride home from library conferences and book festivals (before that became too expensive) and never leave for an auto trip without a book bag filled with three or four books and several current magazines. 

I thought that I had plenty to read when I went to Alabama in October.  My daughter had a very bad case of double pneumonia, but she was released soon after our arrival.  I decided to stay a couple of weeks, and settled in with her family.  My granddaughters understood that Grandma's reading time was important and I was happy to see them (and hear them) read their own books. 

My son had brought his Kindle when he was visiting there, and left it when he went home.  During my stay, I picked it up and began reading.  I alternated between reading my library books and The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo on the Kindle.  After a week or so, I had finished my library books, and moved on to The Girl Who Played with Fire.  I also read some of the Kindle's User Manual and figured out how to have a book downloaded (within seconds) from Amazon. 

After I got back home, I let my son know that I owed him a couple of dollars for a book I had downloaded and also told him that I really enjoyed the Kindle.  He said that he was happy to hear that and told me that he was sending me one for Christmas.  I started making plans about how I would integrate the Kindle into my reading times at home.  I wanted to put it to good use, but felt, somehow, that I was being unfaithful to my books; I was having an extra-biblio-affair -- my own guilty pleasure that would somehow diminish my book-lover status.

Of course, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas went very quickly, and I was extremely busy with preparations for both.  We had lots of company for Christmas and I put my new Kindle aside until after everyone was gone.

During January, I explored the features, skimmed the manual, downloaded some free books, and visited the Amazon website to explore more thoroughly what was available.  Among my downloads were two versions of the Bible: The King James and the American Standard.  I also downloaded a book of daily meditations and a couple of classics that I had intended to read.  I wasn't ready to download bestsellers, literary fiction or nonfiction, but I was happy with my Kindle and decided to use it in the following ways:

• I wanted to read the Bible through.  Previous efforts (or promises) had failed.  The "Read the Bible in a Year" assignments that I had try to follow jumped around too much and the assigned readings didn't necessarily fit my schedule.  Sometimes I was able to read more, and sometimes less.  Using the Kindle, starting with the New Testament, I am able to read at my own schedule.  The Kindle stays at the page where I stopped, in the font size that I have chosen.  If I do happen to go to another passage, I can easily bookmark where I left off, so that I can return. (My "home page" contains a list of all my books.  No matter what book I want to read, the Kindle takes me to where I left off in that book.)
• I also decided to use my Kindle for my daily meditations, for the reasons above.
• I have vision problems.  I particularly have vision problems in church; I can't follow the scripture in the Bible because the print is too small and my eyes don't adjust quickly enough from visually following the minister and the illustrative screens at the front of the sanctuary to the small print in the Bible.  My Kindle solves this; I can look in the bulletin and find the scriptures for the day's sermon and go ahead and have them in the font size that I can see. 
• I looked forward to having my Kindle with me when I was away from the house.  I especially looked forward to travelling with it and planned to download some leisure reading when we vacationed during the summer.

During the time I was getting acquainted with my Kindle, I visited my Dad, who is 89 and is experiencing visual and hearing problems. Dad loves to read and  I thought that he would be interested in the Kindle's font-size feature, where he could increase it to the size he needed.  He seemed mildly interested, but as I suspected, he wasn't ready to commit to a new technology.  This wasn't surprising, since his interest in any technology is pretty much limited to watching DVDs my brother loads for him, and using the closed captioning when it's available.

Later, I mentioned to my brother that I had introduced Dad to my Kindle and Rick said that Dad had told him about it.  This was evidence that Dad was interested, if not completely sold on having one.  I also mentioned it to my son, and Cory said that he wanted to buy a Kindle for Dad, which he did and had it delivered to my house.  I downloaded a Bible and several collections of westerns, plus some biographies of presidents and the writings of Abraham Lincoln (all free or almost free).  My Dad was one of the pilots who flew in supplies during the Seige of Bastogne (Battle of the Bulge) during World War II, so I also purchased a book entitled The Battered Bastards of Bastogne and downloaded it.  I asked Rick to meet me at Dad's when I took the Kindle to him.

We introduced it and all it contained to Dad.  There is a learning curve for seniors with any new technology, but Dad was willing to try, and didn't seem too daunted by accidently turning a page or learning the nuances of the arrow buttons.  He has begun to read the Book of James in the Kindle version of the King James Bible and was very interested in the westerns and the book about Bastogne.  As usual, I went a little too far when I wanted to show him how to search for his battalion and company; he was a little frustrated when I showed him the results and explained that he would have to go back into the book to read the complete passages.  But he is willing to learn and I think that he'll appreciate the gift more and more as time goes on.

So, that's basically my own experience with the Kindles in my life.  I will tell you about my Nook in my next post.  Yes, I have a Nook and a Kindle and, for me, that's not too much of a good thing.  More later --

Annie