*IDEAorange

OK. Now we’re talking.

I would buy this device. I know it only does books — a one trick pony. But it let’s you lend your books to oth­ers and it doesn’t look like a Texas Instru­ments cal­cu­la­tor. This device looks like BN hired some prod­uct design­ers and some inter­face design­ers, and a mar­ket­ing crew that knows how to do point-of-purchase.

Barnes and Noble have lis­tened to the crit­i­cism of the Kin­dle and have brought a more sophis­ti­cated and attrac­tive device into the fray.

• The price is rea­son­able from the start.
• Design is clean.
• Multi-touch.
• Color nav­i­ga­tion panel (for swip­ing through book cov­ers, a la iTunes)
• You can buy it in a BN store. (many dis­tri­b­u­tion points — one a few blocks from me)
• You can browse dig­i­tal books
• You can lend your book to oth­ers on a num­ber of devices
• It has a mem­ory expan­sion slot
• It can play MP3’s
• It can read PDF’s (essential)

Did I men­tion that the design is clean? The device is a bit thicker and weighs more than the Kin­dle. The other impor­tant part is mov­ing away from pro­pri­etary formats.

I’ll be head­ing down to the Barnes and Noble to check it out. I’ll let you know if I am as impressed when I can touch it.

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