My strange buying... (Dance shoes and NookColor eReader)
So I'm probably going to file this under, reason's why I'm still single... LOL Oh I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons, but I'm sure these aren't helping.
Anyway, I'm at the point in my Argentine Tango where the way I pivot (spin on the balls of my feet) is affecting my dancing. Especially with a partner. We were doing molinetes (where the man pivots on his foot, while his partner travels around him).
I was having problems doing it because I was overusing my hips when I turned. Part the reason was my shoes. So I finally broke down and got some dance shoes. They are from the brand Go Go Dance (not Gogo boots, thank goodness) from Ballroom Connection here in Sunnyvale. They are made of leather and have a felt sole for better sliding on dance floors.
Wow did it make a difference! I'm gonna need to get used to the new shoes, but yah, it made my pivots, ochos and a few other things much smoother!
So the next day, I was gonna just drop in at Barns & Noble to grab a coffee and sit down to read after doing family portraits at the studio. But then I noticed they had the new NookColor eBook readers. I had read the Engadget review already and although I liked the design and the features, the fact that it still seemed slow and unpolished made me want to wait. Also the fact that it can only go for 8 hours (with wifi off) was a bit of a turn off. My Sony reader (which is b/w and uses eink) lasts for weeks without a charge.
However, after using it... wow, it's awesome! X-D I mean, it's no iPad of course, but it's also half the price of the iPad. The screen is absolutely gorgeous, glossy, but still very readable. The review was right, although responsive, it still has random slowdowns and just not as buttery smooth as the iPad or some of the high end Android phones out right now.
But the great screen for reading color content (manga of course) and the very usable web browser really did surprise me. Also it was the perfect size and weight. I found the iPad too big and heavy to be an ereader. For a tablet it's fantastic. So yah, I picked it up. LOL
I put on my copy of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest and started reading where I left off from my Sony reader. I also started rereading some manga I already had, High School of the Dead, Vulgar Ghost Daydream and xxxHolic. I mean they were fine on my Sony eink reader, but man they looked STUNNING on the NookColor. So much more detail and pixel density and of course the extra color art in HSotD was great!
Also, in the morning, I generally check a few web sites in bed, Twitter, Engadget, Gizmodo, Huffington Post. I usually don't use my laptop because that would mean getting out of bed. So I use my phone, which is just too small. The NookColor was the perfect size. X-D And since the browser is very usable (again still not as fast as the iPad or iPhone 4) it's way better then my Palm Pre screen size and speed wise.
The only down side so far has been that, it does read PDFs very well, but it can't bookmark them. Which is strange, so if I was reading a 200 page manga and went to read something else, it would lose it's place. :( Thankfully a quick way to fix that is to convert the PDF to EPUB, which I should do anyway to resize the manga pages to fit the high res screen.
The other thing is the battery, a full day of heavy use made the battery go to about 45%. So I can probably go 2-ish days between charges. Not bad. It also uses a standard microUSB plug, which makes it easy for me to charge it at home or at work.
The one thing I haven't tried yet was trying to read out in bright sunlight. I've been at work since getting the NookColor so I haven't *seen* bright sunlight yet. -_- But will give it a go when I can.
Overall, I've been super happy with the NookColor! I was telling a co-worker that I think that the NookColor being an ebook reader gave me a different expectation vs it being a "tablet." If I wanted a tablet, it would basically have to be the iPad or something just as good. IMHO all the current Android tablets (including the Samsung Galaxy Tab) aren't good enough yet.
But if it's an ereader, if it reads books, magazines and manga well, anything else, web browser games, etc as long as they are just OK, it's passible. If you want a "tablet" you do not want the NookColor. But if you want a decent color ebook reader that happens to have a web browser, Pandora and basic apps, I think you'd be pleased.
But yah... talk about random buying huh? LOL