The Barnes and Noble Nook of e-readers is one of the most successful ventures by a company introducing an electronic book reader to the market place. The company does suffer from a number of lingering issues that have been failed to be addressed. The company could even be accused of trying to do too much too soon and many users are claiming a myriad of problems.
One of the main problems is the inability for customers outside of the USA to procure and use the device. Barnes and Noble does not ship its e-reader outside of the USA and will not do custom orders outside. This means if you are an international user you are basically out of luck unless you buy it from EBAY or our retail partner SHOPEREADERS.COM. There are many other companies that carry the Barnes and Noble Nook line of e-readers in a retail setting, such as Target, Walmart and Staples. These companies do not ship outside of the USA either, remarkably diminishing availability.
Because the Nook is not sold outside of the USA, you cannot register the device and shop the ebook store unless you do a few things. We recommend registering your device to a fake USA address or an existing one such as an Art Gallery or Post Office. If you have moral qualms about doing this, you can take out a PO BOX or use various proxy companies in the USA that allow you to use their virtual office as an address. Once you do this for your billing and shipping address when you are registering your device you can use your local credit card to pay for purchases. So if you live in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, or any other country, you can use your real credit card and name. Just make sure to use a real email address, because this is the only way the company sends you purchase confirmations. Barnes and Noble will never ship anything to your registered address, only your email account.
One of the most other common problems we hear about at Good e-Reader is the LENDME functions that allow you to share select ebooks you purchase from the Barnes and Noble eBook store. If you have an email address that is associated with your B&N account of your friend you can lend a book out for a duration of two weeks. One of the most prevelent concerns is that books can only be leant out ONCE. When you lend a book out you cannot ever lend it out again and many users are not aware of this.
Barnes and Noble implemented a update earlier on that allowed you to read full versions of books on your device when you are in a physical book stores. This feature is very buggy for a number of reasons. We have heard reports that when you open up a large percentage of books it immediately kicks you out of it when the book loads on your screen. It then says that your reading time has expired even though you just opened it. One of the reasons why this occurs is if you visit more then one different Barnes and Noble retail setting. If you try and load up a book that you are reading at the store, quit and then go to another location it will often crash when you load that particular book up.
Many people often complain about the screen ghosting or flashing when you are turning pages. The Nook Simple Touch, WIFI and 3G versions all use e-Ink as the display technology which provides the true book experience. This technology often has refresh rate issues which result in sometimes a bit longer load times or ghosting of images/text on a screen. The Nook refreshes the pages every 6 pages so you can eliminate this problem by scrolling forward in a book. Alternatively if you notice the screen sometimes flickering and sometimes not, it is because you hit the six page threshold.
Finally there is a small input screen found normally on the back of the device which is your hard reset button. If your device ever stops refreshing the screen or locks up you can insert a small pin and hit the reset button. This will manually reboot your device and normally fixes all of the problems.
If anyone is experiencing problems not listed here, please let us know and we can help you resolve them.