So, as my last post stated I decided to return the Nook and try out the Kindle. I made the decision knowing full well that if I didn't like the Kindle, I'd have to pay shipping to get rid of it, and go back to the Nook.
It arrived last night and here are the REAL differences I noticed between the Nook and the Kindle 3. If you research both of these products, you'll probably boil it down to something similar to what I wrote in my Nook review. So I won't rewrite any of that information, but I will talk about some of the points that I made before. It will be stuff that I never found in print.
The first thing that I noticed about the Kindle 3 was the screen. They say it's sharper and has better contrast, and they're right. It's not a night and day difference, but it's there. No matter how small I have the text I can always read it, whereas the Nooks text was only readable with the smallest texts with a good deal of squinting, concentration, and headache. IE, don't bother reading on the plane with tiny text. The Kindle is much, much clearer.
I also noticed that there are shadows on the Kindle screen. Not often, but it really does look a bit like screen burn-in back in the days of "big screen TV's". After some page turning it disappeared, so that's really not a big deal unless it occurs more often in the future.
Also in regards to the screen, when Amazon claims faster page turns, they're very right. Also, Kindle3 doesn't negative the whole screen before changing it to something else like Nook. The refreshes on the Nook weren't so slow that they were annoying, but if I were to go back from Kindle3, I'd get frustrated in a hurry.
My next delight was the size of the Kindle 3. It's light and small. On paper it's smaller than the Nook, and in your hand it's even better. The back is rounded on the outside cover (but not concave like Nook) and it sits in the palm of your hand quite easily. The page turn buttons are better (in my opinion) as well. Some people may not like how easily they are pressed, but the Kindle 3 is weighted so that if you're holding it in any number of natural positions you won't easily accidentally turn the page.
The keyboard is very reminiscent of many slider-style smart phones. It's about the same size, and while it's functional, I first thought Amazon really should have taken a note from Samsung or HTC on how to properly make a small qwerty keyboard. My biggest problem with it is that you're forced to use the "Sym" button to access most of the alternative keys such as ', !, ?, etc. There is an "Alt" key on the keyboard that gives you access to them without the menu, but without the alternates being printed, only experimentation will reveal them, and heavy use will master them for no-look typing. I'm already trying to master one handheld keyboard, so this one will have to wait.
That covers the appearance. So let's get into using Kindle 3. To activate it there is a power slider on the bottom. It's rather poorly placed because a stray pinky could easily lock it back up. Other poorly placed buttons are the volume rockers. Also on the bottom. The bottom of devices is rarely the ideal place to put any sort of controls. That's where they rest, and that's the most uncomfortable spot for controls. Really though, it's not a big deal. They volume buttons don't press that easily, and the Kindle 3 reacts within a second to lock or unlock.
You navigate by using a permanent 4-way rocker button with a select button in the center. I like this FAR more than the context sensitive touch screen of the Nook for many reasons. You always have it at hand, it's harder to fudge a button press, tactile feedback, to waiting for the device to reawaken the screen to do what you want to do (such as looking up a word).
When you start it up the first thing you see is the Home screen. When you compare this with the Nook and its color TFT at the bottom, it's like being in a barren wasteland. Nook shows you a big colorful list of things to do, Kindle 3 shows you a bland list of books and "collections". Collections are differentiated by being in bold italics. Nook tells you where you are. Kindle 3 lets you figure it out for yourself. There is a flip side of that coin, though. I'm quite happy to not be inundated by demands to buy more crap. Whether by chance or intention, the Kindle berate the consumer with unnecessary clutter (you know, like every smartphone!).
Hit the "Menu" key and you're greeted with a menu that reminds me of the old Windows CE or Windows Mobile 5.x, 6.x. You're given a tear down box with a few options such as Turn Wireless Off (bad form, by the way it ends in a preposition!), Shop in Kindle Store, Settings and Experimental (where it stores the browser, MP3 player, and Text-to-Speech).
This is the way with the Kindle in its entirety. It's descent use of the screen and interface, but for people who are used to overly elaborate GUI's like Windows or MacOSX it can be painful. Once you start tooling around with Settings and configuration you'll find that Amazon did a pretty piss poor job of setting up navigating the innards of the Nook. Settings are traversed by moving the underlined selection from option to option, rather from sub-heading to sub-heading. It makes using the menus confusing and less intuitive than it could be.
Once you've poked around inside Kindle 3 you'll find that it just feels empty compared with Nook. They have almost the same functionality, but the way that functionality is presented is pretty drab and boring. It could still be SO much better.
I loaded up the browser and while a black and white version of the web isn't ideal, it shows the ability of a device like this to shine. The cursor is controlled by the 4-way rocker and very smartly. When the website is too zoomed out to read the Kindle will sense it and give you a better zoom. It's very zippy for e-paper and easily matches the Nook's hybrid browser in usefulness.
Here we come to a touchy point for me. The main reason I can justify buying an e-reader is that most of what I enjoy reading is public domain. So like with the Nook, I used the Kindle's browser and searched for "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and immediately found the free version on the top. What irked me is that Amazon wants me to pay for "wireless delivery". Hmm.. I seem to be the one paying for my router, and my electricity... WTF is this charge, then? Is this for the people who have the "Free" 3G every time they buy a book? (granted, if you do the math and Amazon charges you $2 for ever book, you'd have to read 15 books a month. An easy feat for some, but I'm not into the quick reads as much as others might be).
I'm all for paying a buck or two for a book that isn't in PDF format (I'll get to this problem later), but I'm never going to pay for a "wireless delivery" charge. Maybe it's for "Whispernet"?
EDIT: I was not charged any money to download any of the free books. The "Wireless Delivery Charge" was waived much in the same way you get a free phone. It costs $99, but there is an 'instant rebate' and you don't actually pay a cent. I did a bit of digging around and couldn't find out why it existed. It could be a Christmas promotion or they may only assess it to those who are browsing and downloading titles via the 3G connection in many of the Kindle models. Amazon may be passing the burden of the cellular charge to only those who actually use it. If that is the case, then kudos to them. It is indeed a rarity in the retail world to only pay for what you use. END EDIT
Whispernet is Amazon's book centralization/synchronization system. Basically if you are reading your books on the Kindle, computer, and a cell phone, it will synch your books to every location, as well as your notes and bookmarks. I see how this can be very useful seeing as if I turn a few pages on my phone while waiting for my wife to rampage about the dollar store, I don't really want to have to catch up when I get back to my Kindle. It is, however, just a convenience heaped upon another convenience, and I'm not willing to pay for it.
Here comes the only problem I really have with Kindle 3. As of yet, I have not found a way to simple scale PDFs to smaller fonts the way the Nook does (adding more screens to each page and tightening up the margins when you zoom in). Kindle wants you to zoom in and move the viewable area as you go. This makes PDFs neigh unreadable if the font wasn't already big enough in the first place. I plan on converting books that I cannot get from the Kindle store (or are cheaper elsewhere) to PDF format for reading using free tools. This, folks, could be a deal breaker. Unless I'm missing something, the stark menus offer no consolation, only zooming and panning about PDF documents.
I'd have to say that so far the annoyances (and one glaring flaw) of the Kindle 3 are less than the Nook, and it's features outshine the Nook. The Kindle 3 is everything the Nook isn't, but not necessarily everything the Nook is. It just does what I need it to do very well, and the features it's missing? Well, I'm not missing them.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
It's Barnes & Noble, not "NOBLES"...
E-readers... When I saw the Kindle I thought, "That's a great idea. That's going to kill." I didn't want one, but I knew it would sell well and it would be the next big thing. I was right. Being that I buy 90% of what I read from Half Price Books, I figured an e-reader was on the bottom of my needs list. A year later, Barnes & Noble comes out with the Nook. I fell in love... I asked for it as a Christmas gift, but got the shaft. I put it out of my mind for a while. [EDIT: My wonderful wife would like me to point out that I did NOT get shafted as Christmas last year, I merely did not receive a Nook]
Now, I've been keeping track of e-reader hardware for a long time. When the Nook came out something grabbed me. It was probably the color touch screen controls. I wanted to get my hands on them, but never got around to it. Fast forward to a year later.
I saw my friend's nook and I played around with it. It "kindled" a new e-reader fire in my belly. I saw the utility and the general savings of the product. i could carry all my books everywhere. TEXTBOOKS would be in the palm of my hand, with the added bonus that I didn't have to read off an LCD (which I do 8-10 hours a day and my eyes are fatigued all day). E-paper is amazing. I think it's just a very fine black and white LCD (you know, like in the Tiger Electronics handheld games) with a much easier to read screen.
Even with those advantages, I still needed more push. What's that? Books written prior to 1923 are free because they're not copyrighted? SIGN ME UP! Almost everything I read was written before the 20th century!
Even though I loved the Nook, I researched for a few weeks the differences between Kindle and Nook. I looked at other e-readers and tablets and knew that LCD was not an option. Sony has an e-reader similar in price but I don't like it for two reasons. One, the screen is only 5", and two... well, it's a Sony product. I don't get along with Sony products at all. Their proprietary memory and software is almost always junk, and always incompatible to the point of frustration. I just won't buy any of their computer gear or gadgets.
After a long battle I came down to these fundamental differences between the current Kindle and the Nook.
Nook:
My initial reaction was one of great disappointment. Barnes & Noble's website made it prohibitively difficult to access free books and materials by displaying a very small result of search options, and clogging said results with 'free chapters' of books that aren't free. Actually, i was pissed. But then I rummaged through Google's book site and it was all better on the free front. Yay
My next task was to see about library support. First I had to get a library card from my local library, then bring it to the bigger library in the 'city'. I, well, I haven't gotten around to that. I've been too busy reading Lord of the Rings. Does this mean that I should be nixing the whole 'Epub' argument for Nook ownership??? I think it might. If I don't miss something, I never needed it, right??
Reading on the Nook easy, page turning takes a second, but it's not annoying. Browsing the contents of the Nook takes some time and the interface isn't as practical as we're led to understand. After poking around for a while I got the hang of how the non-reading interfaces work. Browsing your library is sluggish at best. The included browser is surprisingly good, though. That is, unless you need to enter data. That's painfully slow. The delay from touching a virtual key to it registering to appearing on the screen is a second or two, and it's very annoying. I tried the browser on a plane ride and found that it was quite usable with AirTran's sluggish internet. It just fit!
Some bad points that I've noticed are that the Nook freezes. The device doesn't respond fast to anything you do so you're often pressing buttons trying to wake it up (and get rid of Oscar Wilde's portrait) when you finally give up and shut it off and wait the two minutes for it to load anew. This happens every few days. Enough to be annoying.
The next issue I take is that I don't get the week of reading B&N says I should. More like 2 days. Maybe it needs to be discharged and charged a few times to 'exercise the battery', but my trial period isn't long enough to do that.
Finally, and most disturbingly, there is a screen anomaly in the shape of some sort of bubble that formed under the screen. It reflects light in a jarring way and is big enough to be distracting at all angles and times. I don't know what B&N says about that in the warranty, but nothing has spilled on the device or touched it otherwise.
So it's looking more and more like the Nook could go back to the store... But then I remember that Google's marketplace doesn't work with Kindle! Amazon has their own file format, and so Kindle sits all on its own, unable to read the industry standard files..
There is hope, however. Converting DRM-free e-books to pdf is pretty trivial, so if i get some free books from Google, I can convert them with little to no hassle, and read on a Kindle.
As it stands, I'm heavily leaning on returning the Nook and buying the slightly cheaper, longer lasting, slightly faster page-turning Kindle 3. In fact, I just ordered Kindle and Nook will go back on Monday. Sorry Nook!
Now, I've been keeping track of e-reader hardware for a long time. When the Nook came out something grabbed me. It was probably the color touch screen controls. I wanted to get my hands on them, but never got around to it. Fast forward to a year later.
I saw my friend's nook and I played around with it. It "kindled" a new e-reader fire in my belly. I saw the utility and the general savings of the product. i could carry all my books everywhere. TEXTBOOKS would be in the palm of my hand, with the added bonus that I didn't have to read off an LCD (which I do 8-10 hours a day and my eyes are fatigued all day). E-paper is amazing. I think it's just a very fine black and white LCD (you know, like in the Tiger Electronics handheld games) with a much easier to read screen.
Even with those advantages, I still needed more push. What's that? Books written prior to 1923 are free because they're not copyrighted? SIGN ME UP! Almost everything I read was written before the 20th century!
Even though I loved the Nook, I researched for a few weeks the differences between Kindle and Nook. I looked at other e-readers and tablets and knew that LCD was not an option. Sony has an e-reader similar in price but I don't like it for two reasons. One, the screen is only 5", and two... well, it's a Sony product. I don't get along with Sony products at all. Their proprietary memory and software is almost always junk, and always incompatible to the point of frustration. I just won't buy any of their computer gear or gadgets.
After a long battle I came down to these fundamental differences between the current Kindle and the Nook.
Nook:
- Touchscreen LCD interface
- Uses EPub format (makes libraries accessable)
- Can buy books from Google now
- Faster e-paper screen (pearl)
- Vastly superior battery life (roughly 3x's Nook)
- Slightly cheaper e-books than Nook
My initial reaction was one of great disappointment. Barnes & Noble's website made it prohibitively difficult to access free books and materials by displaying a very small result of search options, and clogging said results with 'free chapters' of books that aren't free. Actually, i was pissed. But then I rummaged through Google's book site and it was all better on the free front. Yay
My next task was to see about library support. First I had to get a library card from my local library, then bring it to the bigger library in the 'city'. I, well, I haven't gotten around to that. I've been too busy reading Lord of the Rings. Does this mean that I should be nixing the whole 'Epub' argument for Nook ownership??? I think it might. If I don't miss something, I never needed it, right??
Reading on the Nook easy, page turning takes a second, but it's not annoying. Browsing the contents of the Nook takes some time and the interface isn't as practical as we're led to understand. After poking around for a while I got the hang of how the non-reading interfaces work. Browsing your library is sluggish at best. The included browser is surprisingly good, though. That is, unless you need to enter data. That's painfully slow. The delay from touching a virtual key to it registering to appearing on the screen is a second or two, and it's very annoying. I tried the browser on a plane ride and found that it was quite usable with AirTran's sluggish internet. It just fit!
Some bad points that I've noticed are that the Nook freezes. The device doesn't respond fast to anything you do so you're often pressing buttons trying to wake it up (and get rid of Oscar Wilde's portrait) when you finally give up and shut it off and wait the two minutes for it to load anew. This happens every few days. Enough to be annoying.
The next issue I take is that I don't get the week of reading B&N says I should. More like 2 days. Maybe it needs to be discharged and charged a few times to 'exercise the battery', but my trial period isn't long enough to do that.
Finally, and most disturbingly, there is a screen anomaly in the shape of some sort of bubble that formed under the screen. It reflects light in a jarring way and is big enough to be distracting at all angles and times. I don't know what B&N says about that in the warranty, but nothing has spilled on the device or touched it otherwise.
So it's looking more and more like the Nook could go back to the store... But then I remember that Google's marketplace doesn't work with Kindle! Amazon has their own file format, and so Kindle sits all on its own, unable to read the industry standard files..
There is hope, however. Converting DRM-free e-books to pdf is pretty trivial, so if i get some free books from Google, I can convert them with little to no hassle, and read on a Kindle.
As it stands, I'm heavily leaning on returning the Nook and buying the slightly cheaper, longer lasting, slightly faster page-turning Kindle 3. In fact, I just ordered Kindle and Nook will go back on Monday. Sorry Nook!
Halo: Reach(ing for a good game)
Reach is the third game in the Halo universe that I've purchased. The others being Halo Wars and ODST. I've played all the games quite extensively prior to purchasing Reach and I don't know why I decided to blow $60 on this one when I never bought the others at full price.
I've always felt that Halo is one of the few games that has a campaign game that is good enough to justify the existence of its multiplayer. And up until Reach, it's been true. However, to me Reach signifies the epitome of the all too common cash grab game. They've got a great story and fan base, so they make a sequel. As I understand it, this has nothing to do with Bungie, they had to do it per contract. I blame the fans.
At the risk of offending one of my closest friends, I really feel that Reach is nothing special, and in retrospect I'd love to return it and wait for it to appear in the bargain bin. All Reach is, is a graphically updated Halo: Combat Evolved, with a couple more vehicles, more Spartans, and jet packs.
The game takes place on the planet called "Reach" (bet you're surprised). If you read the Halo books, it's basically the human second home to Earth. The covenant find it, assault it, and win. It's technically a prequel to the other Halo games since it ends just as the original Halo begins. The usual universe canon arguments apply. 90% of which are based around the weapons. "If the Reach spartans had such great weapons, how come the Master Chief only got a Rocket Launcher?" Well, in the books something happens that causes all their super-advanced equipment to jettison into space and they can't go get it. How's that for a plot hole fixer!
I know I should write more about the game, but I really don't want to since I'm so bored with it. The multiplayer is the same as it ever was, minus dual-wielding. You can now do melee attacks with finesse, but all that does is make you a target (sure, you might net a few extra points).
Now, however, you can choose loadouts for your spartan or Elite. Yup, the loadouts are thus: jetpack, sprint, lockdown, drop shield, dodge, active camo and hologram. I may be missing one, but if that's the case it probably sucks. These all work in-game as well, which makes certain parts much easier if you know what to choose. Each loadout has a limit on use and a cooldown period until you use it again.
The only two that really need explanation are the hologram and lockdown. The hologram is a dead simple (and dead stupid) dummy Spartan that runs to the point in focus when you use it. It doesn't jump, dodge, maneuver or even wave. It just runs in a straight and falls if gravity necessitates it. Unless you're playing with newbies it'll almost never work. The image fizzles periodically so a veteran sniper won't attack it. At most you're looking at a fraction of a second worth of distraction.
Lockdown is a different beast. Your Spartan punches the ground and stays crouched until the timer expires. It's useful if you're waiting to get hit by a vehicle because they'll either bounce off, fly over you, or blow up. A lot of the time you're a sitting duck. If you wait for the shield to expire there is a tiny burst of energy that blasts off of your guy.. I don't know if it affects anything, but it does have the awesome factor.
I should also note that the active camo in Reach is... odd. First of all, the more you move the worse it works. If you stand still it's almost perfect, but running will pretty much ruin the camo and you may as well just switch it off. It also activates a motion tracker jammer so anyone in the area sees little read dots flying in random directions. Fun.
The main reason to play Reach (and every Halo game) is multiplayer. Reach does a TON of fan service by making its multiplayer completely geared towards what fans have been doing all along. Bungie included tons of game variants and now the Forge is so customizable that basically brand new games in the form of variants are coming out all the time. The main reason this is better than Halo 3's forge is Bungie included stationary objects in the forge. No more balancing acts! You have the option of letting stuff just sit in space without tricking the game engine into holding it there.
I'd like to write more but the game is old enough that anyone reading this is doing it for posterity , and I'm really not doing Reach any justice. Earlier I mentioned that I'd buy Reach in a bargain bin... Well the main reason I wanted it is because my brother wasn't buying it and our Halo nights with 10-16 players have always been a source of intense fun, and I don't want that to stop.
Cheers.
I've always felt that Halo is one of the few games that has a campaign game that is good enough to justify the existence of its multiplayer. And up until Reach, it's been true. However, to me Reach signifies the epitome of the all too common cash grab game. They've got a great story and fan base, so they make a sequel. As I understand it, this has nothing to do with Bungie, they had to do it per contract. I blame the fans.
At the risk of offending one of my closest friends, I really feel that Reach is nothing special, and in retrospect I'd love to return it and wait for it to appear in the bargain bin. All Reach is, is a graphically updated Halo: Combat Evolved, with a couple more vehicles, more Spartans, and jet packs.
The game takes place on the planet called "Reach" (bet you're surprised). If you read the Halo books, it's basically the human second home to Earth. The covenant find it, assault it, and win. It's technically a prequel to the other Halo games since it ends just as the original Halo begins. The usual universe canon arguments apply. 90% of which are based around the weapons. "If the Reach spartans had such great weapons, how come the Master Chief only got a Rocket Launcher?" Well, in the books something happens that causes all their super-advanced equipment to jettison into space and they can't go get it. How's that for a plot hole fixer!
I know I should write more about the game, but I really don't want to since I'm so bored with it. The multiplayer is the same as it ever was, minus dual-wielding. You can now do melee attacks with finesse, but all that does is make you a target (sure, you might net a few extra points).
Now, however, you can choose loadouts for your spartan or Elite. Yup, the loadouts are thus: jetpack, sprint, lockdown, drop shield, dodge, active camo and hologram. I may be missing one, but if that's the case it probably sucks. These all work in-game as well, which makes certain parts much easier if you know what to choose. Each loadout has a limit on use and a cooldown period until you use it again.
The only two that really need explanation are the hologram and lockdown. The hologram is a dead simple (and dead stupid) dummy Spartan that runs to the point in focus when you use it. It doesn't jump, dodge, maneuver or even wave. It just runs in a straight and falls if gravity necessitates it. Unless you're playing with newbies it'll almost never work. The image fizzles periodically so a veteran sniper won't attack it. At most you're looking at a fraction of a second worth of distraction.
Lockdown is a different beast. Your Spartan punches the ground and stays crouched until the timer expires. It's useful if you're waiting to get hit by a vehicle because they'll either bounce off, fly over you, or blow up. A lot of the time you're a sitting duck. If you wait for the shield to expire there is a tiny burst of energy that blasts off of your guy.. I don't know if it affects anything, but it does have the awesome factor.
I should also note that the active camo in Reach is... odd. First of all, the more you move the worse it works. If you stand still it's almost perfect, but running will pretty much ruin the camo and you may as well just switch it off. It also activates a motion tracker jammer so anyone in the area sees little read dots flying in random directions. Fun.
The main reason to play Reach (and every Halo game) is multiplayer. Reach does a TON of fan service by making its multiplayer completely geared towards what fans have been doing all along. Bungie included tons of game variants and now the Forge is so customizable that basically brand new games in the form of variants are coming out all the time. The main reason this is better than Halo 3's forge is Bungie included stationary objects in the forge. No more balancing acts! You have the option of letting stuff just sit in space without tricking the game engine into holding it there.
I'd like to write more but the game is old enough that anyone reading this is doing it for posterity , and I'm really not doing Reach any justice. Earlier I mentioned that I'd buy Reach in a bargain bin... Well the main reason I wanted it is because my brother wasn't buying it and our Halo nights with 10-16 players have always been a source of intense fun, and I don't want that to stop.
Cheers.
It's been a while
I've been busy...
Three games I want to post reviews for: Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii (it's awesome), Brutal Legend (fun but nothing too special), and Halo: Reach (blah).
I've also done a lot of work with my Samsung Epic that I'd like to discuss.
Finally, I've purchased the Barnes & Noble Nook, and I'll post my feelings on that as well.
Three games I want to post reviews for: Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii (it's awesome), Brutal Legend (fun but nothing too special), and Halo: Reach (blah).
I've also done a lot of work with my Samsung Epic that I'd like to discuss.
Finally, I've purchased the Barnes & Noble Nook, and I'll post my feelings on that as well.
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