David Pogue’s review:
Every one of the Nook’s vaunted distinctions comes fraught with buzz kill footnotes.
Later:
Now, the Nook may have some hardware advantages — a removable battery, a memory-card slot and (because of narrower plastic margins) a slightly trimmer shape — but the Kindle is still a better machine. It’s faster, thinner, lighter and much easier to figure out.
I’m disappointed that the Nook isn’t better, even though I’m a Kindle owner (and fan). Competition is always good, and it looks like the Nook was horribly rushed to market as a sloppy, unfinished product.
Some of the software flaws are likely to be corrected quickly. But one particular performance flaw is a big problem in an ebook reader:
…the Nook’s screen is achingly slower than the Kindle’s. It takes nearly three seconds to turn a page — three times longer than the Kindle — which is really disruptive if you’re in midsentence.
I can’t stress enough how big of a problem this is. The Kindle 2 — the fastest ebook page-turner available, as far as I know — turns pages just quickly enough not to be annoying or distracting.
Even if the Nook becomes twice as fast in a future software update, that’s still too slow.
debbie’s nook arrived today, and she let me open it up and play around with it. i really wanted to like it, but as soon as i turned it on, it turned me off. it took a really long time for any sort of home screen to appear, with a lot of flashing of the e-ink. once it booted up (if i need to use the phrase “booted up” to describe your e-reader, there might be a problem) the movement between screens became marginally quicker, but there was still a noticeable lag. and more flashing. once it was done charging i put it back in the box.
