Ask HN: Kindle or Nook?

I own the Kindle and I've played with the Nook.<p>Nook felt odd, the touch screen wasn't very responsive and I had to press twice a few times. It felt a bit heavier too.<p>In regards to the features you want: Kindle boot-up is instant with a flickr (~2 seconds max) if coming from standby, which it goes into when you just leave it there after reading (or manually place it). Battery life is ok, but not the 3 weeks it's advertised as. Dictionary is a snap, just point the cursor to the word you need to know about and a little blurb shows up on the bottom of the screen; Simply beautiful and you can expand it to view more of the definition. Variety of book types are ok. PDF support is available, but I haven't used it yet because Kindle for Mac isn't out yet.<p>My girlfriend has been using the Kindle a lot as well for reading novels, myself mostly the paper and we both are in love with it. There's a lot of small, neat things that it does a good job at, while being awesome at being a reading device that you can forget about and focus on your material.

I like (and own) the Kindle 2, I don't like the Nook. Its thicker and heavier. It felt like it might fatigue your wrist after reading a while.<p>Skiff looks cool, but I'm a fairly loyal Amazon customer at this point :).

I would go with the Kindle as well. I've used both and the Nook seems much slower when doing things that you do a lot with an e-book reader, like turning pages.

How about Sony PRS-600? I'm in the same situation as you (thinking about buying an ebook reader in a non-US country), and the Sony seems to be one of the few valid alternatives to Kindle. It doesn't have that ugly keyboard and unnecessary wifi/3g connections. Regardless, with Calibre (<a href="http://calibre-ebook.com/" rel="nofollow">http://calibre-ebook.com/</a>) even blog reading should be possible.

I have a Kindle 2. Though I like everything about it, it has the following issues:-<p>1) In India, free internet on Kindle does not work. But Wikipedia do work.<p>2) All the Magazine, Blog subscriptions will be stripped off the Graphics. Amazon is 'Saving' on the bandwidth costs they pay to the country specific Mobile Operators!

I would say also try to play with both of them at some point. The Nook can be played with in most stores - and playing with it sold me on the Kindle.<p>The Nook was quite slow in switching pages, extremely difficult to scroll down, and the goofy color/touch screen at the bottom was more of a nuisance than anything else.

If you want one to be used mainly for PDF you need to go for a larger screen, so neither the small kindle nor the nook. I think price tag starts at about 500 and non of them has internet access or keyboard anyway.

I use my Kindle DX (best for PDFs) outside the US all the time. The new DX will also have international access (which can be disbaled). Plug it into a USB, and drag and drop your files.

I would pick the Kindle. It hits all four of your points and will have the greatest battery life, especially if you don't use the wireless connectivity.

Assuming I did want all those features (wifi, access to web, physical keyboard and wide selection at the bookstore) would it change to the nook?

Can you wait for the Skiff? Looks pretty amazing. And bendy.

Skiff.