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Estimated reading time: 8.0 minutes, 56.0 seconds, containing: 1768 words

First of all I just want to say that I love my Nook, and all of the bad things that I am going to say about it I say them only because I want this product to improve and this can only happen from feedback of its users like myself. Also I would like to add that at this point I would have liked to have a new Amazon Kindle for comparison but since I don't have one and Amazon hasn't even started shipping the new Kindle, I can't tell which operating system and software is more polished at this time unless I can find a really good and recent review of the latest 2.5 Kindle firmware with photos in order to see what features the Kindle has.

This review will be my biggest challenge so for blogging wise because it's the longest post that I have written so far and I am sure that I will have many revisions for it, especially in order to get rid of all of the I I I pronouns but this wont stop me from writing this post, and if my writing style is so bad, then I just look forward to improving it as I keep blogging... And now without too further ado let's just get started :)

First shortcoming: Weak PDF Reader and PDF functions support

This to me is a surprise because when I open my Nook I get a disclaimer that this device uses Adobe Digital Editions technology and since Adobe invented the PDF standard I expected for the Nook in its fourth software update to have superb PDF support. Unfortunately although its support is good... it could be great with the addition of these features:

1. Ability to Pan and Zoom - Kindle got this support and I have to say it would come in very handy to also have it in the Nook. I have some scanned books that I have not OCR'ed and when I transferred the book and tried to read it the pictures were super small, and without zooming in you just cannot see the pages well.
   • This would also be handy when I have a normal book that has some screenshots that have small details which I would like to see, and as of this moment this is not possible so to me lack of pdf zooming is a big minus.
2. Font Support - Reading an epub book give you access to four different fonts to choose from, while the pdf's only have the default Amasis Font.
   • I have to admit that this font looks the best and when I read an epub book I still keep this font on, still if I am allowed to choose from different fonts on an epub book I should be allowed to pick other fonts as well when viewing a pdf.
3. Formatting - this is a big one for me :( because I planned on reading a lot of programming books on this device, and the pdfs look great with font formatting and styles until you get to code snippets
   • In languages like Python where the language is whitespace sensitive you want for the code formatting to be preserved and for it to display with the necessary tabs or soft-tabs in order for the code to be formatted and displayed properly. Therefore while some tabs are preserved (usually it only preserves the first level tab, the other tabs are missing leaving the code hanging in odd ways, hindering your ability to have a proper flow of the code and therefore taking an immense amount of time to decipher even a 5-7 line of a snippet code).
4. Bookmarking Implementation - Right now when you bookmark a page you are not being asked whether you want to name the bookmark like you are being asked when you are taking a note or a highlight.
   • This to me is a bad thing because when you make thirty bookmarks and you want to later visit those bookmarks ... what does page 21 bookmark say to you? To me not a whole lot so right now I am bookmarking pages that I want to read later but six months from now I will forget for sure which bookmark I was looking for and I might have to just visit them one by one until I would find what I was looking for.
5. No Notes and Highlights - This is another features that epub books have and pdf books don't and I am quite surprised that even after four firmware revisions pdf books still haven't got this feature yet.
   • There are a lot of phrases that I would like to highlight and save for later but right now I can only do so for epub books and even then this feature is not well implemented as I will explain this in a later section.
6. Weak Search Features - Right now you can only search for words, and I would like to be able to have an advanced search where I can search for Bookmarks, Notes, and restrictions like only in chapter x or through chapter y.
   • This is not yet such a big deal for me but this should be implemented as soon as possible in my opinion because right now searching is too limiting to say that it's any useful.

Second shortcoming: Epub support with its minusses

THe epub support is about the same as the pdf with the addition of the Highlights & Notes and Lookup word:

1. Highlights & Notes - This features again only works for epub books although I wish pdf books would have this support even in this current state where it lacks the ability to display all of the book's notes.
   • Right now I don't understand why you can name your highlights because if you have two highlights on the same page and you go to - "View notes for this page" you are only presented with the next options:
     • Next Highlight
     • View/Edit note
     • Delete highlight
   • Why have the ability to name your highlight if you can't see the name of it and you can't search for it? And where is the ability to view the highlights that you made for the entire book not just for the current page?
   • All of these discoveries for me are shocking and I truly expected more from the Nook software in its fourth revision... and if some of these limitations are because of the epub standard than this is even more lame... although I tend to believe that it's not the standard but the implementation that lacks here!
2. Lookup word - Provides a dictionary like functionality allowing you too see what the word that you've highlighted means, this is something that the pdf books should also support if possible, there might be words that you do not know and seeing the definition could help you to understand the words and message better.

Third shortcoming: Other things lacking or badly implemented

1. Audio player shortcoming: Go to your audio player and you will see a big X on the top right corner of the screen... if you click on it and expect for the audio app to quit you are mistaken just like I was... all it does it to actually minimize the app so that you can continue listening to the song while you are doing something else
   • So how do you stop the music? You just hit the Pause button and then music will stop and you can hit the X button to minimise the app again. This is again shocking to me and it goes against any design patterns where X means Close and Stop and yet for them X is minimize and pause is stop... if they still keep this behaviour by the next firmware I will be very disapointed, not because I can't get my intended action completed but because it's just a weird way of doing a common task for no good reason what so ever again IMHO.
   • Another thing missing from the player is the ability to display songs with its corresponding folders, and I have right now two folders with different music that is all placed in the same playlist. If I don't have folder management and displaying then the audio player is a toy feature, good only for having one album at a time.
2. Playlist management - because I might need to search for a song, save, modify, create, delete different playlists or something similiar.
3. Wifi management - In order to turn off the Wifi completely you have to switch the Nook to Airplain mode... I believe that I should be able to also turn it off from the wifi menu completely.
4. Lack of a calendar app a simple Todo or Notes app - my Palm Zire 31 right now is more useful for my productivity right now since I can write things down if I need to remember something.
   • Some of you might say that this is an e-book reader not a Palm or an organizer, but I could see myself reading something that I would like to put it in a txt file with some notes, and a Notes app would be great to have my thoughts collected whether I pick them up from a book, or from talking to someone and just having the Nook at my disposal.

My top four wish list items for the 1.5 or next firmware

Of all of the things that I just enumerated here are my top three items that I wish would get fixed for the 1.5 firmware:

1. Pdf Zoom and Panning - again super useful if you have scanned books.
2. Bookmarking made useful - give me the chance to name my bookmarks and search for them.
3. Notes app and or a better implemented Highlights and Notes - feature that can also be used for pdf files
4. Pdf formatting - better preservation of the whitespace, any technical book that contains snippets of code could benefit from having it properly displayed, and also with better table support, right now I feel like there isn't any support at all, any tabular data being displayed without any borders and broken down.

What about you? What are the features that you lack the most or that you want to have changed for the Nooks software?

If more of us talk about the things that we would like to see them changed or implemented then maybe Barnes & Nobles would listen and implement them quicker... so let's get our voices heard and hope for the best ideas to be implemented to this otherwise great ebook reader!