Amazon recently announced that they sell more ebooks than they do traditional print and paper books. While it's certain that e-readers are a significant part of the publishing industry, many laptop owners, however, like to curl up around their computer to read a good book, instead. They consider the computer screen plenty good enough for reading already. For those folks, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon have made their e-readers available as desktop applications.
You can download the Kindle app from Amazon and the Nook app from Barnes & Noble. Since both applications are free, you could certainly load both on your machine. But most folks like to use a central service and program to get their content; no one wants to try to remember which book is on which program. It's best to keep things simple.
So, let's talk about which e-reading app is better for the computer; should you use the Kindle or the Nook? Since we're talking about both Mac and PC applications here, you should know that the Kindle is identical across both operating systems. However, the Nook is much different on Mac than it is on the PC.
Book display
Let's start with the most critical part of reading a book on your computer: how does it actually look? After all, if you're just reading a wall of text, then you might as well be reading a Pages document.
The Kindle displays a single "page" at a time. It basically looks like a word processing document, although you can toggle the display to present two columns instead of one. You can choose to make the reading screen black text on white background, white text on black background, or a brown on sepia color. You can also adjust the number of words that appear on each line of text, the size of the font, and the general brightness of your display. All of these controls are found in the menu bar, although you can also reach most using on-screen shortcuts.
On the Mac, the Nook displays its ebooks in a faux-book experience. The viewing screen is divided in half, as if the left side were one page and the ride side were another. You can shrink the size of the text, though, and if you shrink the text small enough, you end up with three "pages" on screen at at time. However, that's where the customization of your reading ends; you can't change screen colors like you can with the Kindle.
The Nook for PC is different. It still feels like it's trying to look like a book, but the default view actually starts at three pages instead of two. You also can't actually customize anything about the look of your ebook inside the reading screen. To do that, you must find the Reader Settings panel in the main menu's control bar. If you make the font large enough, the view will return to that two-page look the Nook for Mac achieved so well. However, you must keep moving between Reader Settings and the reader view to actually get things set up how you want them. This is especially a pain since you might want to change these settings on the fly while reading.
The Nook for Mac display looks a little more polished and aesthetically pleasing than the Kindle, but the Kindle offers much more control over your viewing experience. The Nook for PC looks okay, but the lack of control inside the reader makes getting your settings right very frustrating.
Book shelf
The "book shelf" for both the Kindle and Nook is intended to let you find your ebooks quickly. The Kindle's book shelf is really just a display, though; it doesn't do much to extend the "book shelf" metaphor. The Kindle for Mac allows you to organize your books according to the most recently viewed books, title, and author. You can also look up archived items and change the display from a picture grid view to a list view.
The Nook for Mac offers a grid and list view of your books as well, although the "grid" view has some visual nods to the "book shelf" metaphor. While it's a subtle touch, these visual cues offer a more "book-like" experience. Additionally, you have the option to click each book to get more information, such as whether you can copy text from it or how much you can print from the book. The Nook for Mac offers the same sorting functions as a Kindle, but it also splits up your content according to whether it's an ebook, etextbook, magazine, or newspaper.
The Nook for PC is more like the Kindle than its own Mac cousin. The books are simply provided in a grid, and you toggle through each organization method at the top. Surprisingly, the Nook for PC just doesn't feel as "finished" as the other two.
As a note, you cannot print at all from Kindle or Nook for PC. Only the Nook for Mac offers that ability, although some material can't be printed due to publisher restrictions.
Highlighting text
Both the Nook and Kindle have an array of options when you highlight text. On the Kindle, when you highlight text with your mouse, you can choose to apply a yellow highlight to it, copy it, add a note, look up the text in Google, Wikipedia or a dictionary, and even report a content error. You can also search the rest of the book for the same text. For example, if you want to know how often a particular phrase appears, this tool will help get that done.
The Nook for Mac does all the same stuff, except that it does not have an option to report a content error. On the positive side for the Nook for Mac, however, you can highlight the text in a variety of colors; the Kindle and Nook for PC only offers one color.
The Nook for PC, again, is missing the cool features of its Mac cousin. On a PC, the Nook can only highlight in a single color, add a note, and look things up on a dictionary and Wikipedia. You can not look things up in Google nor can you copy text.
Customized feel or more options
Ultimately, Amazon's Kindle for both Mac and PC offers a more customizable feel when you're reading. The Nook for PC isn't much different, thought it feels unfinished and not quite as elegant as the Kindle. That aside, the Nook for Mac has many more options for you, such as different highlight colors and printing from your book. The Mac version of the Nook also feels a little more polished and leans a little more heavily on the "book" metaphor of e-reading than the other two.
This means that if you're a Mac user, you will probably prefer the Nook application. On a PC, though, the Nook has nothing to recommend it over the Kindle; in fact, the Kindle has many features the Nook does not. It's odd that the Nook for PC feels so unfinished, while the Nook for Mac is fantastic.
It's worth noting that if you look at the user guide for the Nook for PC, you can find text like this: "With NOOK for PC, you can carry as many books as you like on the go." That feels like text that was intended for the e-reader, not an application; it was probably simply ported over to the Nook for PC.
In the end, the Nook for Mac gets 4 stars from us, both versions of the Kindle gets 3 stars, but the Nook for PC only gets 2. The Nook for PC is serviceable, but feels incomplete.
Post by Michael Gray
[Image credit: Trint]
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