Category: Gadgets

My Nook Observations and Irritations

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gadgets, Nook, Products I LikeLeave a comment

I finally did it! I finally bought a Barnes & Noble Nook last night. It didn’t take me very long to figure out how it works but here are my observations and irritations.

I bought the first Sookie Stackhouse novel and at first I was put off by the fact that swiping the touchscreen wasn’t working but I finally got it to work and now it works all the time. Sometimes I accidentally brush my finger on it and it turns the page lol. Oops.

I was reading this morning and my dog came to me to pick her up so I sat the Nook down on my desk and when I went to pick it up again I couldn’t turn the page. It was frozen. And that happened to me a few times last night but I didn’t understand why.

My observation from that irritation is that instead of setting it down, I’m gonna have to turn it off with that metal power button on the top and watch it go into screen saver mode then lay it down. When I pick it back up it I have to push the power button again.

I was playing with the Sudoku game last night and having fun actually but sometimes if I pushed the arrow button on the touchscreen on the left side it goes to the menu and I’m forced to start a new game or go into the menu. I think that if I just go into the menu then go back to the game it might continue but that wasn’t the case for me. And when the nook shut down completely when I turned it back on, it erased my game completely forcing me to start over. HOW IRRITATING!

I probably won’t be playing it that often because of that very reason.

It seems to freeze on me a lot and at first I started to think that I may have gotten a defective one but what are the odds that I would get a defective one? I always seem to think that an electronic is defective so I return it for another and it shows the same sign of defectiveness. I don’t want to have to go all that way back to B&N just to suffer the same pains especially if that’s normal for the Nook.

When you are in your B&N library you can choose to see the little covers on the bottom to choose a book to read or you can just push the arrows up or down to choose a book. Although it’s faster to choose from the book covers. However, when you have put your own books in the Nook via the USB cable, you don’t get that option. There are no little book covers. I kind of figured that it wouldn’t show them but that’s fine, I don’t care.

I do like being able to highlight a word or type out a note but unfortunately when you go to highlight things, if it’s down at the bottom you have to push that bottom arrow and it can take forever. That’s one thing that impressed me with the Sony that you could use the stylus to tap on the word but unfortunately the touchscreen makes it hard to read books. Typing is a bit of a chore too because my fingers are so fat that I can’t even see if the letter lit up or not when I press it so I’m constantly having to look up at the e-ink to make sure I pressed it lol. I definitely need a stylus.

I also bought the King James version of the Holy Bible because you never know when you’re gonna need it. Unfortunately, navigation is a biotch. When you go to a book it shows links for all the chapters. If you want chapter 1 then perfect, it’s on that same page but if you want chapter 21 then you gotta push the arrow button twenty million times to get all the way down to 21. Ok so twenty million is an exaggeration but you know what I mean.

Once you finally get to your chapter you just have to turn the page to the verse you want.  That’s a good time to bookmark it for when you are at church and you are supposed to turn to that page.  You can just wake up the Nook and go to your bookmarks.

Highlighting is kind of a bitch if you are highlighting something at the bottom of the page because as with finding the bible chapter you have to press the arrow button many times to get to it before you can start selecting the text.  When you do go to select the text you can highlight it and you have the choice of writing a note or just hitting submit.

Unfortunately, and this is an irritation, you can’t look up your highlighted notes from the beginning of the book.  The only way you will be able to find that note is by making a bookmark.  The Nook for PC software allows you to find all your notes.  I don’t know about the Nook software for other devices such as iPhone, iPad, blackberry etc.

Despite my irritations, I’m glad that I bought it because now I can enjoy reading books that I would otherwise have to read on my computer monitor which is not very comfortable on my eyes or my back.

It’s Hard to Convince People

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gadgets, News, NookLeave a comment

Ever try to convince someone that some “thing” is better than the other? It’s very difficult especially when that person is adamant that they do not want this new thing. They give you an excuse and you have an answer but they give you another excuse and you have an answer for that too. They can’t win this argument lol.

I’m trying to convince Darrin that when I buy my Nook he might get some use out of it too. Not just books but newspapers and magazines as well.

He said that he likes to read a regular newspaper and magazine because he can find things easily but my response was that you can find things much quicker with a Nook. All you have to do is type in a keyword and it will find every instance of that word. Or you can highlight articles that you want to go back to and then go into your highlights to find them.

He said that he likes the feeling of a newspaper or magazine, yet he has trouble letting them go. When he buys a magazine he doesn’t like to toss them afterwards because he paid a lot of money for them. Have you seen the cost of magazines? My god, those things are expensive.

A LA Times newspaper is $1 a day and I think it’s $2+/- on Sundays. Well, if he got a subscription to the LA Times on the Nook, it’s only $10 per month. I don’t know if that includes Sundays though. I checked to see how much home delivery of the LA Times is and it’s about $11.96 per month. You are only saving $1.96 per month but that’s $23.52 per year and you are saving trees at the same time. If you were to recycle all those newspapers you probably wouldn’t get that $1.96 back for a month worth of newspapers since they are thinning out so much these days. Then again I don’t know that for sure, they pay you by weight, not by how many you have.

I was looking at the eMagazines they have and they really aren’t anything that I would be interested in and Darrin never reads what they have available. The only one that would interest me is PC Magazine but I wouldn’t read it that much. He likes magazines like Time, People and Architectural Digest. Those aren’t available for Nook. So since nothing really good is available I won’t even try to convince him on that aspect.

But the key points that I was trying to convince him on is that you can look up articles by keywords, highlighting and making notes. When you write a note in an article you can refer back to your notes and it will bring that particular article up.  He said he could look something up fast in a magazine or newspaper but I bet him anything that I could find it faster on a nook.

He goes to Church, not every Sunday but most Sundays and he loves to bring his own bible that he had his name engraved on. There is no way I can convince him with a Bible for Nook. He saw how one guys bible was weathered and falling apart and all this stuff was highlighted and he made a remark about how he couldn’t wait for his bible to be as used as his was. So that I won’t even try to convince him of. Besides, when he is at Church is the perfect time for me to read and I wouldn’t like it if he had my Nook during those times lol.

There are so many things that make me giddy about electronic toys that he could care less about. Although when I actually get it he might feel differently but until then he couldn’t care less despite how much I try to convince him.

He was impressed when I told him that you could make the text a lot bigger to make it easier to read and the fact that you could visit websites and write emails and I could even blog from the Nook.  Although I don’t know if I would want to because of the touchscreen keyboard but if we were visiting family it would be a lot easier than using the mobile dashboard with my PSP.  I could also type more than I can on the mobile version.

There are some things that you have to see for yourself and when we get to the Barnes & Noble next week he can see how cool they are with the display that they have.  He’ll realize they are a lot better than he wants to give them credit for.  He’ll see.

Shopping for an eBook Reader

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gadgets, Kindle, Nook, Products I Like, TechLeave a comment

Someone I follow on tweeted this link today. Engadget’s back to school guide: E-readers. Naturally I had to look because I too want to buy an e-book reader. I have wanted one ever since they first came out but never could afford one because they were in the $400 – $600 range (around 2006).

In November 2009 I started blogging for pay (via PayPerPost and Blogsvertise) with the intention of saving money for buying an e-book reader, Kindle or Nook. Preferably a Nook because of the color screen at the bottom but it didn’t really make any difference. They were both around $265 or so back then.

I had a lot of trouble saving the money for one because my monthly income is so low that when I run out of grocery money I ended up taking the blogging money from PayPal to buy food. Since I have a PayPal debit card it makes it so much easier to spend the money.

9 months has gone by since I made the commitment to save the money and I still don’t have an e-book reader. However, the thing that I wanted the most out of an e-book reader was a lower price to justify my purchase.

eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook and Sony Reader have all gone dramatically down in price, down to a price that I can finally afford.

Unfortunately, they still don’t fit my needs. What I want is an e-book reader that will accept a lot of formats like .lit, .prc, .pdf, .mobi and .epub. What I want is for an e-book reader that would allow me to read those formats and still be able to use their dictionary. I don’t know if they all let you to use the dictionary with just a .pdf file which is what makes my decision so difficult.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6″ Display, Graphite – Latest Generation:

Pros: The new Amazon Kindle is stylish. I love the graphite color. I like the keypad on the bottom, it’s small enough that I’m ok with it considering I would probably be typing on it occasionally when searching for keywords, making notes and searching for books in the Kindle store. They have games on it, which I don’t really care about, I just want it to read but it is good to know. The price dropped down to $139 and has free 2-day free shipping which is awesome. The battery works for a full month without charging with the wi-fi turned off which is great.

Cons: It does allow me to view my .pdf books but that’s it and I can’t use the dictionary for definitions which is a big negative for me. I mean sure I can’t do that with a paper book but this is electronic and I want that ability. Also, it does not have an SD card for adding more books.

NOOK Wi-Fi, eReader, eBook Reader – Barnes & Noble:

Pros: The B&N Nook is also very stylish with its cool color touchscreen at the bottom which also has a keyboard. The screen goes black while you are reading to keep you from being distracted. It does allow me to add a .pdf, .epub and .pdb file and has a MicroSD slot. The cool thing about the Nook is that you can lend books to your friends and if I had any that had a Nook then we could lend each other books. If you are in the B&N store you can browse through a book for free for 1 hour per day. The price dropped down to $149 and although it’s $10 more than Amazon it is still a good price.

Cons: The Nooks battery is only 10 days unlike the Kindle which is 30 days. The color touchscreen on the bottom is too slow for impatient people like me. Although as I said it allows .pdf, .epub and .pdb files it doesn’t allow the others. All my ebooks are in all the other formats I mentioned above.

Sony Digital Reader Pocket Edition – Dark Blue:

The price of this is different at the Sony site as opposed to the Amazon site. Amazon charges $136.99 with free shipping but according to the Sony site it’s $149.99. I would buy it from Amazon.

Pros: Although it is a little bit stylish in the dark blue color, it isn’t as stylish as the Kindle or Nook. The Sony Pocket Edition does allow multiple formats such as .pdf, .epub, MS Word, BBeB Book (?) and other text file formats. It doesn’t say the others. The ebook store Sony uses is the Reader store which I assume is from Sony, check out books from public libraries and access over one million free public domain titles from Google Books, sharing sites and other online stores and publishers websites.

I don’t know if that means I can access the Rainbow eBooks website or not, I hope it does because that is what I want.

Cons: One of the things I don’t like about this is that it doesn’t have a keyboard for typing and I don’t know how you type anything when looking up a book to buy.

I don’t know if this should go in pro or con, it’s charge only lasts 2 weeks but I mean seriously, I can charge it every 2 weeks.

This is a tough and huge decision, one that I can think about until the first week of September when I will finally have the money saved up to buy one. I’m leaning more toward the Sony reader though but I would like it if people would leave a comment telling me what they think of each of these readers to give me more to think about. Keeping in mind that I buy a lot of books from Rainbow eBooks and ebooks.com.

My Dell DJ Battery

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gadgets, Music, Products I LikeLeave a comment

On July 2nd I bought a battery for my Dell DJ on eBay from the seller battery.search who has a feedback score of 9122 with 98.9% positive feedback which is a pretty good.  That’s the only reason I bought my battery from them.

They told me in the confirmation email that it would take anywhere from 7 to 20 business days which means I could wait a month for the battery to come.  It has clearly been over a month and still no battery.

I contacted that seller yesterday telling them that I am still waiting.  The only thing I can think of is that the shipment was taken from Customs and never released because it shipped from Hong Kong.  But why would customs take the battery and never release it?  It’s a harmless battery that isn’t even charged when it ships out.  When it arrives I have to charge it fully because it won’t work right out of the box.

So the sellers response to me is “can I refund to you???”  My response was NO, I don’t want a refund, I want my battery.  I’m afraid that if they give me a refund then my battery shows up tomorrow and they are out $15 but on the other hand if it never shows up then I’m out $15.  So, after they asked me a 3rd time I responded with a yes, I would like a refund.  But if it shows up then I will issue them a refund lol.

Whatever…

So now I’m back at square one where I was a month and a week ago, with no battery for my Dell DJ and now I don’t want to buy another one because they are all coming from freakin’Hong Kong.  Aren’t there any sellers in the US who sell batteries for the 2nd gen Dell DJ?

I guess the only thing I can do is if I ever want to ride my bike with tunes, bring my PSP with me.  It really sucks because I’m so paranoid I’m going to break it.  The Dell DJ is old enough that even though I don’t want it to break I would feel worse if my PSP broke.  I’m sure the Dell DJ is tougher than a PSP is so I never worry about it.

The Dell DJ battery was my reward for losing my first 27lbs and I never got my reward which sucks.  So since I’ve decided to start wearing jewelry early which would’ve been my 2nd reward for losing another 25lbs, I guess my rewards have switched.  Although now I have to change my 2nd reward to something else, I think a Kindle would be something I can change that to.

Dell DJ Battery

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gadgets, MusicLeave a comment

Since my Dell DJ battery is too big but it still works I have to just keep it on the outside lol.  I have a neoprene camera case that it fits perfectly into and I had it out because I was adding a CD to the   and all of a sudden it shut off and I looked and one of the wires snapped off where it had been soldered.  Needless to say I’m not happy because when I start riding my bike again I will have no music to listen to unless I can find someone with a soldering iron.

Dell DJ

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gadgets, MusicLeave a comment

Ok.  I finally went to ebay and found a power seller who sells this battery for $10 with $7 shipping.  The total was$16.94.  I’m very happy that I bought this.  I was so worried I would have to pay $50 for a battery and then shipping on top of that.  Since it was so cheap, if this works I may buy another one or 2 just in case.

Dell DJ Battery On Hold

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gadgets, MusicLeave a comment

Well, since I bought the pump and frame bag for my bike I now have to wait on the battery for my Dell DJ.  In order to ride my bike I need stuff for it.  If my tire blows I can’t pump it up without the tools in a bag on my bike frame so the Dell DJ is a moot point because the whole reason I wanted to get a new battery was so I could enjoy music while riding the bike, if I can’t ride the bike then no reason for music.

There are a few other things I need as well like a new headlight and backlight preferably the kind that attach to the back wheel that turns on while you are riding the bike.  What can I say, I hate buying batteries.

I also need a bike shirt that absorbs the sweat and makes me cooler while I ride.  Cotton is so bad for riding a bike because it sticks to your skin.  It doesn’t absorb the sweat and then dry while you are riding.  Ok, don’t worry, I won’t subject anybody to bike shorts.  Believe me, it ain’t gonna happen.

I do need a helmet too though.  I know it’s the law for teenagers but it’s only common sense for an adult to wear one.  I tried buying one at this thrift store one time and Darrin laughed at me and it was a very nice one so if he laughs at me then it makes me not want to wear it which is a very dangerous way of thinking because if I got into an accident I’d DIE!

Hopefully when I get all that I need to ride then I will be able to get a battery for my Dell DJ.  I just can’t ride without music.  It’s so boring without it.  I do have a solar charger that plugs into the Dell DJ so that’s not a problem, the solar charger works as a battery.  But still, I’d rather have a proper battery.

Dell DJ Battery a No Go

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gadgets, MusicLeave a comment

Well, I got an email from that website about their Dell DJ battery and the one they sell is definitely for Gen 1 DJ’s and that will not work on a Gen 2 DJ.  They said that people have bought it in the past and found it did not work and had to return it and pay a restocking fee.  This sucks.

They told me to go to 2 websites pdaparts.com or pdasmart.com.  The first website didn’t have anything for Dell.  They had lots of batteries that looked like mine but they were specifically for iPods.  The 2nd website has a battery but it doesn’t specific generations.  It just says “DELL Digital Jukebox, DELL Digital Jukebox DJ, DELL Digital Jukebox Series”.  I emailed them asking if it will work on a 2nd Gen so I have to wait for their email.

The thing that really  bites here is that the battery from this other site batteryship.com is that they were only charging $25 for a battery plus shipping which was like $7.50 or something and it would’ve been more economical to buy 2 because they offer a 10% discount for the purchase of 2 or more.  So because their battery won’t work for me I have to go to pdasmart.com and that battery is a whopping $48.

It just occurred to me to check via part number and came up with 1 thing on eBay.  Someone is selling the exact battery I need and the starting bid is .99 cents and there are no bids.  I’m tempted to bid $30.  The auction ends the day before I get my check.  The only thing is if I buy it on eBay I have no warranty and no guarantee that it will actually work and not die within a couple of months.

Dell DJ Battery

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Well today I finally got the balls to open up my Dell DJ to take the battery out so I can measure it in MM.  The battery that I found to buy is 50mmx85mmx2mm.  Well, my battery is 50mmx95mmx2mm so it’s actually longer than the one for sale which is fine.  This just means it will fit with some wiggle room hehe.  It couldn’t be more perfect.

Dell DJ Battery Replacement

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Darrin bought me a Dell DJ for Christmas 2004 and during 2005 I was listening to it all the time everyday, on the way to the gym or sitting at my desk or even while doing the dishes.  I was always listening to it.  But over time the battery would die sooner than it was supposed to.  Sometimes it would even freeze up and I had to just wait for it to start playing again.  I couldn’t turn it off or do anything.  I just had to wait for it.

The battery is supposed to last like 5 or 6 hours or something and over time the amount of time it actually played kept going down until eventually it only played for half hour.  Now when I unplug it, it just dies immediately and gives me a screen saying the battery is low.

I’ve treated that Dell DJ like a baby by never dropping it or losing it.  I’m a good nerd, I respect my electronics enough that I don’t get them broken or stolen.

I’ve called Dell that first year when the battery started dying and they wouldn’t help me even with my warranty.  I was too late in renewing my warranty and so when I called for help they said sorry you don’t have the right warranty for this.  I was like dude, I have a $318 paper weight now.  Thanks a lot.  They were like I know, I can understand how frustrating you are but we can’t help you.  I was like well can I just buy a new battery and ship it to you to replace it and they said yeah for like $75 or something like that.  I’ve never had the money to do that.

Every once in a while I do a search on the net for Dell DJ Batteries and I found a website that has them for $24.95 + shipping and it has the tools to do it yourself.  It says it takes a few min but a testimonial says 10 min.  I don’t care, I just want a new battery and $25 is not a bad deal.  I will have to wait until I get some money because I’m tapped lol.