Posted on 02/13/2014 5:47:26 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Don’t mock the beleaguered Nook owner. That could have been you.
Five years ago, when the nation’s largest chain of bookstores released an e-reader that it promised would best Amazon’s Kindle, could you blame the poor souls who bought in to Barnes & Noble’s vision of the future? In 2011, Consumer Reports proclaimed the Nook the best e-reader in the land, saying it surpassed the Kindle in just about every way. Well, that sounds pretty definitive, doesn’t it? No wonder your aunt bought you one for Christmas.
Things haven’t played out well since. After failing to douse Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble has spent the last year refashioning its Nook strategy, and with its recent reductions in e-reader staff, the Nook’s end looks nigh. If you own a Nook, the fate of your books may now be up in the air. Sorry, you bet on the wrong horse.
The Nook’s fate isn’t unusual these days. Technologies have always gone belly up, but tech extinctions may become even more common over the next few years. We’re living through an exhilarating and mystifying time in the tech business, when every established brand and business model — from the Windows PC to the whole idea of selling software and hardware for a profit — is suddenly under assault.
Today, five behemoths — Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft — plus a dizzying array of start-ups are competing to win every dollar and minute you spend in tech. While each of these companies offers differing sets of technologies sold under widely varying business models, they all share a common feature — trying to hook you deeply into an ecosystem of interconnected technologies.
The trouble arises when you are sold on a tech ecosystem that doesn’t prosper.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Not going to spend more money to not read more books.
I wonder if there is a book exchange where you can read em and exchange em?
A time will come when all known books will be digitized and sold online for downloading via your eBook reader ( from whatever company develops it ).
I already own 20 books ( on all subjects from Novel to Business to Technical ones ) on my Kindle, saving me a lot of book shelve space.
What, and give up my time on FR? :)
My books will be around a lot longer then any nook.
Through lack of innovation and a forward vision, Microsoft has been just ‘sitting there’, waiting to be replaced with something else since Windows Vista was released. Vista wasn’t THE reason for what will be their inevitable downfall, but that is around the time it became apparent. Certainly Vista had to speed up the process a bit though. Now they’ve released another bomb with Windows 8, which is a couple of more nails in their coffin.
Unfortunately for PC manufactures like Dell and HP, who joined themselves at the hip with MS, they are going down with them. The PC makers would serve themselves well to change their business model. Run like hell from Microsoft, allowing themselves to lower prices, and release Linux on their systems. Linux would be FAR more palatable for your average end user than Windows 8.
Microsoft should focus more on their Servers/Networking. They still do that quite well, and it can be very profitable. They are also in good shape with their Xbox ONE gaming consoles, though the PS4 is a little better, IMO.(I own both)
This was written last year.
It tells about B&N getting out of making the new Nooks.
The article has an interesting section on the security aspect of these tablets.
My family was going to buy one for me as a Christmas present last year. The prices were really slashed. However, when I went to the B&N site, many users of the new Nook were not that happy, and the security problem appeared to be a serious situation.
http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2141278
I was interested in the electronic books. I will probably get one of the new Dell tablets with 64k Memory, with Windows 8.1 and the MS office. Apparently, you can get Kindle books that work on the new Dell Tablets with Windows 8.1.
So does your wife prefer her Kindle to her iPad?
The technology peaceful war of “which system of reading matter is best” brings forth a very simple answer.
Why spend your hard-earned money, for a piece of technology, that has an active life, of an AA battery? You have to recharge it, obtain updates peculiar to your little machine, and then, if necessary, buy the electronic material, or rent, you wish to read, and possibly with a time limit, before it ‘self-destructs’.
For all that money spent, you could purchase either the hard-bound, or paperback trade version of the real book!
Anyone wanna buy a gently used Betamax?
If I dig deep in the pile I can find the NIB laser disk player I found decommissioning an office for a remodel.
The good answer is to only buy stuff that let’s you actually OWN what you put on it. The failure of Nook is only really a problem if they remote delete your stuff (which Amazon has done when they lost rights to stuff, don’t know if Nook has). If they don’t remote delete all it means is that you won’t be able to get new stuff for it, a minor nuisance at best.
Which is of course one of the big reasons I’m still a physical media guy, you always own that.
Sure it is, turn off automatic updates. Or at least flip the option to download but don’t install.
Because they were 3rd to market and tied to the least influential company of the 3. They’re really good devices (very flexible and pretty inexpensive) but if you’re in the e-reader market your first thought is either going to be Amazon or Apple and by the time you get around to remembering B&N has an offering too you’ve probably already bought from one of the As.
The best product doesn’t always win. The best market position does.
Is this a serious question? The answer is, because when I get on a 6 hour cross-country flight, I don't want to bring four books with me in a carry-on bag. I can pull out my iPad and I have my entire library available at the push of a button. And when I get tired of reading, I can surf the web, watch a movie, or play a game.
I say this as someone that prefers physical books to e-readers. But to say why would anyone every buy it? That's silly.
RE: The best product doesn’t always win. The best market position does.
Well, unless BN turns things around, their product is going to die ( just like the DEC VMS and OpenVMS did even though it was one of the best engineered, reliable, easy to work with, Operating System and Computers I’ve had the pleasure of working with ).
And I guess this makes the author’s point as well.
Their product was doomed from day 1 because they were late to the market and didn’t have enough of the consumer brain space. On some level I think they knew that which is why they made such a great product (I’ve got a lot of gadgety friends who have everything and they all liked the Nook best), hoping quality could win out even though it never does.
If that list leads to the WIN, then I’m on the gravy train. I did make a couple of false starts since the my wife and I both have Nooks from a couple of years ago. But I do like my iPad-Mini for reading with the Kindle app where I buy my books thru Amazon. My primary use of Google is just as a search engine so I’m not quite to Nirvana yet.
As soon as technology advances to the point where we have time machines — I’m going back in time to before computers.
I have the Kindle, she has the IPAD.
I prefer the Kindle just because it is smaller and less expensive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.