Getting close

Classes begin in a little over a week. I'm starting to feel the rush and excitement. I wish I could spend more time at school to help ease my new classes jitters. Yeah, I'm kind of a nerd that way. Oh, well!

So, this last week has had me busy with work and I haven't had any real science, physics, or school based adventures really. My school uses two different E-book providers. The main provider is Nook Study. The other is called something like "Generic E-book Provider" I'm not kidding. It may not be those words exactly, but it is something that mundane. Today, I delved deeper into the Nook Study. I believe I'm going to love and hate this software.

Besides the monetary benefit I have already discussed earlier, there are considerable more factors at work. I do like the idea of not carrying around a 1-ton tome/librum and a laptop to every class. That's about where the clear benefits end. Every other consideration is either not clearly a benefit or is clearly a disadvantage. The free download comes with some free books including Dracula, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice. Also, when you download there are other books they have marked for free if you follow the link from the "Thanks for downloading our software" page. This line up includes Complete Sherlock Holmes: Volume 1, Art of War, and The Odyssey. This is to help you, of course, become more for familiar with the software and make transitioning to E-books all the more easier.

The Nook Study software can be installed with your account on up to 5 individual machines. Wow! That's a good bit of computers. Who needs that many for studying? Well, hopefully not you because any given book can only be loaded onto only 2 of those machines per purchase. You have unlimited re-downloads to those 2 machines, but that's it. Why then can you install on up to 5? It's a free download. what's stopping me from putting it on every computer? With a 2 machine-to-book ratio, 5 installs seems very arbitrary.

The size of the fonts used by the Nook Study is nice and big with nice contrast. I don't feel like I'm being shouted at, but I can read the text as well. This has a drawback as well. On my laptop I have a 15.6" 1366x768 HD TruBrite TFT LCD Display. With the font they use it makes it look like I'm reading from the young child's catalog. Now this is only the default setting. I haven't looked into changing it yet, and I'm sure there is a way to do so. On my PC the smallish pages become three rows. more like reading a pamphlet.

Pamphlety, is it not?

The downloading process is not as intuitive as it could be. The whole process should be as painless and require little thought as i-Tunes or Amazon MP3. The concept is essentially the same. I'm purchasing access to books instead of music. Now this complaint isn't to say it's so difficult to download the books. It just takes paying more attention than one should have to, in post FTP Revolution America.

I got to live with it for this semester, so I'll try to make the best of it. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know.