The latest and greatest

The recent update(1.5), was said to deliver improved speed. While I've never really had a problem with page turn speed it is noticeably faster in the latest version. The entire nook seemed more responsive. This will impress those who have felt in the past that the nook felt sluggish but I've never had a problem with it.

Nook Version 1.3 provides the unexpected

I wasn't even expecting an update but when I received an email about an update to my Nook yesterday I was excited to discover that they had added a web browser, albeit a beta version. Unfortunately the update isn't available over 3G so I downloaded the file via my PC and copied it to my Nook via USB. After disconnecting my Nook the update applied immediately and the process went flawlessly.

In addition to the web browser the update improved performance and improved the main menu, adding games, instant access to wifi and the music player. I could tell right away that page turns were faster. I never felt like the performance of the Nook was poor but this was obviously an improvement.

The browser only works when you're connected wirelessly. I'm hoping this is just for the beta but there was no mention of whether they would offer a 3G experience with the browser. The browser itself works wonderfully. I was able to easily use Gmail, facebook and digg.com. The main reading menu renders the full page while the beautiful color touch screen serves as a view onto a portion of the page which you can interact with using the touch screen. Bookmarks work just like books in that you can view them visually on the touch screen and scroll through them just like the list of book covers that you own.

Could not connect to the network

I was having some trouble downloading books onto my nook. The error message I received each time I tried to download a book was that it could not connect to the network. That didn't make sense to me since I had been browsing the network to find the books that I wanted to buy/download. I was trying to download some free books from Google and I wondered if it was because the books were from Google and possibly on a different network that wasn't accessible for some reason.

I became interested in the book upon which a recent movie was based and decided to download a sample. It told me that it would be downloaded momentarily so I went to check my B&N Documents and discovered it had not been downloaded. I clicked the download now button and it informed me that it could complete the download because I did not have a default address set in my account. I went to my account on the B&N website and set my default address. I was then able to download my sample. I then tried to download some free eBooks from Google and was successful again. It seems that if you don't have a default address set you can't buy books, download free books or get free samples.

Nook on Windows 7 64 bit

I just got my nook two days ago and I'm loving it. There were a few hiccups at first but I've found away around them and I thought I'd share my experience because I haven't found the answers to my problem elsewhere online.

My biggest problem was that neither my laptop nor my desktop could recognize my nook. It kept saying it couldn't load the drivers for my device. The solution turned out to be easy. I tried it on both systems with identical results.

1. Power off your nook. Hold down the power button until it shuts off.

2. Make sure your system is turned on and logged into your administrator level account.

3. Plug in the USB cable to your nook and wait for it to boot up.

That's all there is to it. Upon further attempts to plugin the nook while it's on everything worked fine so I assume it's just the first time you use it on any particular system that you must boot it that way. I'm using version 1.2 of the nook software. This may vary by OS. I only tried it on Windows 7 64bit.

You may notice that you get a message saying you need to scan your device for errors but I get this on my wife's ipod as well so I think it might be a problem with Windows 7 and certain usb drives. I think it's safe to skip the scan.