nook can wait

I tested nook today! And I was disappointed. I thought I wanted one for Christmas, but now I think I’ll wait to see what goodness the Apple Tablet brings. I do think we’ll all have e-readers eventually. But I also think they have a ways to go before they’ll really be able to compete with real live (well, paper) books. I’m fine with the price, $259, because e-books are going for $9.99 and less, so the reader will pay itself off within a year. But here are my griefs:

1. Too slow. The color control screen is supposed to be what slows it down, but I also love the color.

2. Depressing to read. The e-ink has the look of a cheap newspaper, a dark gray on light gray that has no sex appeal at ALL. I want a full-color display, not just a little color control screen at the bottom.

3. Click-it page turn. I want a touch screen page turn feature like the iPhone has, with an image of a real page turning. When I clicked on the side of the nook screen to turn the page, the screen flickered to a dark gray, and then to the new page on top of the old page before settling on the new page for good. NOT cool. (And I’ve heard all e-readers do that, so I don’t mean to pick on nook.)

4. Limited e-books to choose from. Although nook claims to have three times the number of e-books that Amazon has, the one book I wanted to buy was available for the Kindle and not nook. Wassup with that?

5. No Word docs. WHAT? Why doesn’t nook support Word documents? The other e-readers do, and I want to be able to read manuscripts on my e-reader.

To be fair, nook is probably equal if not better than the Kindle 2 and the Sony e-reader. All I’m saying is that as much as I want an e-reader, they still have a ways to go, and with second and third generations likely to be out within the year, I can wait. And now that I’ve tried nook, I am dying to see Apple’s Tablet. Come on, Mac Daddy, show us your stuff!