Nook and Fire tablets ready to square off in e-book battle
— -- Nook or Fire? That will be the question this week when the book barons begin trolling for your holiday dollars with new hybrid portable devices that combine an e-book reader with an Android tablet.
Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire begins shipping on Tuesday. The $249 Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble arrives a couple of days later.
The hardware for the two devices are very similar. Both have a 7-inch color screen with the same resolution. They are each powered by a 1 GHz processor, both use only Wi-Fi to go online, and both run custom version of Android 2.3, an operating system that Google created for phones, not tablets.
The Nook Tablet edges ahead on other specs. It weighs slightly less than the Fire, has longer battery life and comes with 16GB of internal memory (twice as much as the Fire) plus an SD slot for additional storage. Fire owners can park content on Amazon's cloud servers, which negates some of the need for on-board storage.
Both companies have huge libraries of electronic books that they sell at comparable prices. Barnes & Noble offers a large collection of comics and graphic novels, which should look great on the Nook's color screen. The Fire includes a new service that lets users borrow electronic books from local libraries.
But the battle between the two tablets will be focused less on books and more on digital media, including music, games, movies, and TV shows. And that's where Amazon has the advantage.
Over past few years, Amazon has been building its media store to mirror Apple's iTunes. It has millions of MP3 songs and albums to download and games in its own apps collection. Members who pay $79 a year to join Amazon Prime get instant streaming of movies and TV shows.
For streaming video, Barnes & Noble countered by bringing aboard some high-profile partners. Both Netflix and Hulu Plus come pre-installed on the Nook Tablet, but you'll have to pay their monthly fees to watch movies and TV shows.
Nook users can subscribe to digital magazines and newspapers, including TIME, People, and The Wall Street Journal. The Kindle's lineup includes Wired, Vanity Fair and GQ.
Neither one will offer access to the full Android Market of apps. Instead, they each have their own library of games and utility programs. Either way you go, you'll still get Angry Birds.
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E-mail Ric at ricman@courier-journal.com.
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