Those of you who follow this blog may have noticed that I have been silent for almost two weeks. This isn’t because I don’t like you all, or that I haven’t wanted to post on here. I’ve simply been incredibly busy with graduate school, and studying for exams that I need to pass to graduate, unfortunately, supersedes posting here.
That said, I have come out of hiding to lodge a brief complaint against Barnes & Noble, who, as far as I can tell, told me a half truth during my long “should I buy an eReader” escapade. As some of you know, I bought a Barnes & Noble Nook. Many of you may not know that I am quite fond of it. It’s a nice little device, it looks lovely, it reads lovely, and it has been a tremendous help for opening my reading space (with the exception of the last two weeks, in which I’ve been reading nothing by Jacques Derrida and intensive feminist, utopian, and science fiction theory, all of which are wonderful, but also far from simple). So what’s my problem?
Well, when I was considering the Nook, it was made very clear to me that the upside of the Nook
was its frequent software updates and the fact that one wouldn’t need to buy a new device any time soon. This is a plus for me. I don’t want to buy a device that I’m going to have to replace the following year with a much better one. Since the Nook is a first generation device, I was concerned about whether it would be shoved aside by a newer, significantly better second generation one, as has happened numerous times with Apple’s various products (the iPod, the iPhone, and likely the iPad). This explains why I didn’t buy an mp3 player until a year or so after the iPod had reached its second generation (and I didn’t buy an iPod, by the way; I own a Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB, which is a little old now, but works remarkably well and came at a damn good price).
I bought the Nook, then, because I figured that while there would likely be a new device in the future, that wasn’t going to be a future immediate enough to warrant waiting. But then I discovered the following:
 |
| Look, I’m a big fat half-truth! |
That’s right, the Barnes & Noble folks have announced the Nook Color. At $249, it’s a little costly, and I’m not terribly pleased with the design, but that’s not really the point. What upsets me is that I was never given the option to consider the upcoming device. Nobody ever asked me “do you want the standard e-ink, or do you want to wait until the newer device comes out in two months?” I don’t know if I would have purchased the Nook Color, but there’s a good chance I might have considered it.
So, my complaint is just that: thanks a lot, B&N, for not telling me that a new device was on its way and that I might have had the option to wait a little while before making my final decision. You were going to get your money from me either way, because I am anti-Apple and refuse to purchase the Amazon Kindle because of the company’s history. Now I’m a little miffed. When your Nook sales people tell me that all I have to worry about are software updates, then I take that to be true. It wasn’t. At best, it was a half truth, because you might not have told them either (which I think is stupid). So bleh.
That is all…
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A Brief Complaint Against Barnes & Noble
Those of you who follow this blog may have noticed that I have been silent for almost two weeks. This isn’t because I don’t like you all, or that I haven’t wanted to post on here. I’ve simply been incredibly busy with graduate school, and studying for exams that I need to pass to graduate, unfortunately, supersedes posting here.
That said, I have come out of hiding to lodge a brief complaint against Barnes & Noble, who, as far as I can tell, told me a half truth during my long “should I buy an eReader” escapade. As some of you know, I bought a Barnes & Noble Nook. Many of you may not know that I am quite fond of it. It’s a nice little device, it looks lovely, it reads lovely, and it has been a tremendous help for opening my reading space (with the exception of the last two weeks, in which I’ve been reading nothing by Jacques Derrida and intensive feminist, utopian, and science fiction theory, all of which are wonderful, but also far from simple). So what’s my problem?
Well, when I was considering the Nook, it was made very clear to me that the upside of the Nook
was its frequent software updates and the fact that one wouldn’t need to buy a new device any time soon. This is a plus for me. I don’t want to buy a device that I’m going to have to replace the following year with a much better one. Since the Nook is a first generation device, I was concerned about whether it would be shoved aside by a newer, significantly better second generation one, as has happened numerous times with Apple’s various products (the iPod, the iPhone, and likely the iPad). This explains why I didn’t buy an mp3 player until a year or so after the iPod had reached its second generation (and I didn’t buy an iPod, by the way; I own a Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB, which is a little old now, but works remarkably well and came at a damn good price).
I bought the Nook, then, because I figured that while there would likely be a new device in the future, that wasn’t going to be a future immediate enough to warrant waiting. But then I discovered the following:
That’s right, the Barnes & Noble folks have announced the Nook Color. At $249, it’s a little costly, and I’m not terribly pleased with the design, but that’s not really the point. What upsets me is that I was never given the option to consider the upcoming device. Nobody ever asked me “do you want the standard e-ink, or do you want to wait until the newer device comes out in two months?” I don’t know if I would have purchased the Nook Color, but there’s a good chance I might have considered it.
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