# Nook Color- failed to live up to all promises for kids



## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

I have had a Kindle for 4 years and my 10 year old daughter has had one for the past year and a half. We have always loved our Kindles and Amazon has more than exceeded our expectations for them. I have a 7 year old daughter who is dyslexic but loves to read (picture books obviously.) She really wanted a "Kindle" like her big sister and her mom, but she really wants and needs the color pictures. So, the Nook Color seemed to be the perfect answer. I showed it to her online and she was VERY excited. She spent the entire holiday season asking every mall Santa she could find for a Nook Color.

I purchased it for her "from Santa." She was very excited to receive it, but we have all been very disappointed in the actual product. We have never found a single "live action" picture book. The "read to me" and zoom features are very rare (and available on Kindle books for no extra charge.) The Nook Color picture books are very limited in scope and are 40-80% more expensive than their dtb counterparts. As an example: Llama, Llama Holiday Drama (the first book she bought on Nook) was $12.99 on Nook, $12.23 on BnN online for the hardcover and only $8.99 on Amazon for the hardcover. Some books, like the Berenstain Bears, are $9.99 on Nook but only $3.99 on Amazon for the dtb version. That's ridiculous! Ebooks should be less expensive than hardcovers. Especially when they don't offer any extra features.

All this put aside, we took her to a BnN store so that she could read for an hour for free. After we get there, we find out that NONE of the picture books are available in the store to read. NONE! I approached the Nook sales lady, who called over another "Nook Smart" employee, who then called the store manager, who then call BnN corporate. None of them could find a free picture book to read in the store. None of them could find me a single book with "live action" pictures. None of them could tell me when or if any of these features would be available. They all shrugged their shoulders and told me they couldn't do anything for me or my 7 year old who had completely lost interest in her Nook.

I can't take it back because "Santa bought it." She would rather buy a hardcover on Amazon than a book for her Nook because it's difficult to budget books on a 7 year old's allowance. It's sad really. She was completely prepared to tote that Nook with her everywhere like her sister and I do with our Kindles. Unfortunately it has become a very expensive doorstop.

The Nook Color failed to live up to ALL of its promises. Barnes and Noble will not stand behind it and failed to provide ANY customer support. I am in the process of making sure that everyone I know understands the differences between the Nook and the Kindle and the customer service that comes with them.

For all these reasons, I can't understand why anyone would be interested in a Nook, and this is why I call it a $250 doorstop.


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## hsuthard (Jan 6, 2010)

Seriously, tell her you can return it even though Santa bought it because B&N is a good store that way, and get her some books she can enjoy instead. I'm so sorry her Christmas gift didn't live up to it's hype, that would infuriate me.


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## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

Holly, i talked to a store manager but she informed me that I would have to try and return it online because that is where I purchased it. She would not give me a refund. I have contacted customer support twice online and here's the exact response I get from them:

Dear Valued Customer,

We received your recent email and apologize that we have not responded. 
We are experiencing unusually high email volume, and want to assure you 
that your concerns are always very important to us.

We invite you to have a look at our Help Desk by clicking on this link:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/help/help.asp

That's it! That's their customer service. I wish I'd never strayed from Amazon. Never will again... Thanks for the idea though. I thought of that too...


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

I think B&N will increase their children's offerings, and it isn't really fair to blame them for the pricing; it is most often the publishers that set the prices. The Nook Color is a very nice unit. Perhaps a Philadelphia Free Library card would help, they have a lot of children's books available.


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## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

>P92, we have access to a library with Overdrive. That's not the issue. The issue is that BnN promised all of these great "kid features" to reign in additional buyers for the "kid market." They do not, however, have any of those features available. They did a bait and switch (on kids no less!) When you question them about it they stutter, look at their feet and hope that the problem (customer) will just go away. Bad product. Bad customer service. Bad experience.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

I'm sorry that your daughter is disappointed. B&N does tend to exaggerate their offerings, they have since they created the original nook. I still feel that the Nook Color is a fine ereader despite B&N's other failings. However, ebooks are still - often - more expensive than their paper counterparts. It is one of the biggest complaints on these boards, and has been for years. I don't anticipate the publishers to change their stance on this any time soon.


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## eBookworm (Dec 8, 2010)

Hi,
Just a bit off topic..  I bought (or should I say Santa) bought my 7yr little girl a kindle for christmas, can you please suggest some kids books that are cheap or free?  She likes fairies and horses.
Thanks


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

eBookworm--

welcome to KindleBoards!  I think you should ask your question in the Book Corner--it's exactly the kind of question the Book Corner is designed for--with an appropriate subject, you should get lots of answers!

And congratulations on the new Kindle in the family!

Betsyb


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

I agree.. Ask in the book corner. I don't want to sidetrack this thread and I've got a bunch for you.


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## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

P92, I completely understand the agancy model. knidlers have been fighting it too. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Magic Tree House A Crazy Day With Cobras came out yesterday in hardcover, Nook and Kindle versions. It's $12.99 for a hardcover dtb and 9.99 for the Nook version but is only $7.40 on Kindle. So my questions is, why is BnN version $2.60 more for the same book. If it were the agency model, it would be the same on the Nook and the Kindle ebooks. Barnes and Noble simply OVERCHARGES for their books. I have found this to be true with their dtb, and it is really noticable with their ebooks. I could give you tons of examples. This is just the latest one.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Patience is a virtue. B&N tends to bring the price of ebooks down to what Amazon charges at some point.

How about returning the nook and getting her an iPad? Then she can have the B&N app, the Kindle app, _and_ download books from the library.


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## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

P92, patience is a virtue as is honest marketing.  I shouldn't have to wait months for a company to decide to stop ripping me off. I shouldn't have to wait for months for a service that they already stated was available. The real problem is that BnN is dishonest and provides horrible customer service. There is no wiggling around these points.

The really sad part is that everyone knows that BnN over-inflates its offering, over-prices the merchandise and provides terrible service. For some reason we keep excusing their bad behavior. Amazon has proven that treating customers well and living up to expectations is the best business model. I have posted this issue on a couple of boards and time and again people post back that they already knew this, that it happens all the time with BnN and that there's nothing that can be done about it.

No more excuses.


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## mlewis78 (Apr 19, 2009)

I like Barnes & Noble, but I was very skeptical of the marketing they have did for both of their Nooks (I have the original Nook).  Like most other advertisers, they attempt to create a need for a product.


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## s0nicfreak (Jun 10, 2010)

Santa got my daughter an Android tablet for Christmas with Kindle for Android, Nook for Android, and some other ebook reading software. So she can read color books and if something is cheaper for the Kindle than the Nook she can get it for Kindle. And it was cheaper than a Nook color. Maybe you can contact Santa and see if he can do a trade?


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## Rubyw59 (Dec 2, 2010)

I am sorry that your daughter is so disappointed. I believe that they need flash to run some of the animations in the Nook kids or Nook cook. The current android SW for the nook color is 2.1. They'll need android 2.2 (Froyo) in order to run flash. According to the B&N announcement, they should be updating the nook color to Froyo in Q1 of this year and along with it comes more vendor apps. It would be better if B&N released the Nook color with full support of Froyo. However, they want to release a product in time for the holidays. I'm hoping that they'll keep their promise but If not, the hacking community has already developed an atuo-rooter to root the NC to make it a full android tablet where the users can have free access to the android market. 

If you are unhappy with the product, you can always return it and tell your daughter that Santa gets a better present for her. If not, while waiting for the Froyo update, you can ease the disappointment of your daughter by converting some of the DVDs to MP4s to play it on the NC. I converted "how to train a dragon" and everyone loves it. If you are tech savvy, you can root the NC and download some cool games, color books and apps for your daughter. Another beneift of a rooted NC is you can download the kindle app for android and read all the kindle books on the nook.


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## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

Ruby, I tried to convert a digital copy of Despicable Me to Mp4 using Handbrake but the closest I came was a garbled mess. Is there a trick I'm missing? I would love to know your secret. Someone else had mention the root hack too. i tried it for about an hour today but couldn't get it to load from the SD card. I'm going to have to fiddle with it. I think the best thing I can do at this point is root it and turn it into something more versatile than strictly an ereader. It really is terrible as an ereader but it has some potential as a watered down android tablet!


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## meeko350 (Aug 25, 2010)

What about telling her that she can sell her Santa gift on KB or MobileRead and get something else?


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## Rubyw59 (Dec 2, 2010)

Hi Chumpy, This is what I did to convert DVDs.

1)	Download DVD Decrypter. 
2)	Insert DVD into drive and run DVD Decrypter. Source file should be automatically assigned to the DVD drive. Select all files. There are a lot of files. For example: VTS_07_3.VOB (without knowing which track is track, just select them all) 
3)	Selection destination or it is auto. It will take an hour
4)	Download handbrake nighty version. HandBrake nightly builds page at
https://build.handbrake.fr/view/Nightlies/
5)	Click the window one, install the GUI.exe one. 
6)	Open up handbrake, Select source file
7)	Under output setting, container: set to MP4 file
Select source folder: direct to the root folder (normally it is the name of the movie that contains all the files). It'll find whether the correct title and correct chapter. Select all the chapters for the entire movie or those that are of interested to convert. Sometimes I found the last chapter can't be converted so I just omit them. To be sure, you might need to just convert the last few chapters for trial just to make sure that they convert.
9)	Select destination
10)	Under picture: Source 720 x 480. Default: Width 720, Height 368; Anamorphic: strict to make display 850x368 (might have to experiment to change this)
11)	Under video: video Codec MPEG-4; Frame rate: same as source; Target size: 20 -30 min, enter 175 MB.
12)	Under Audio: Audio Codec: AAC (faac), Mixdown: stereo, Sample rate: 48; Bitrate: 128 
13)	Preview to make sure it is the right aspect ratio and language

Hope this will work for you. I also tried to root this before the holiday but I ran out of time before my long trip. I'll try again soon. Some advised me to wait until B&N updates the SW to Froyo. We'll see. I might not want to wait that long.


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## chumpy7969 (Jun 7, 2010)

Thanks, Ruby. I will give that a whirl. You're an angel for putting all those directions down so specifically!


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