Though Barnes & Noble has pulled down its Nook site until the official product launch, we've got all the info plus a few extras, like this spec comparison chart of Nook and Kindle 2:


Click the image for a larger version:




As you can see, Barnes & Noble boasts a lot of Nook's on-paper advantages, not just a second screen and Wi-Fi, but native PDF support, an SD card reader and a replaceable battery. B&N also points out that brick-and-mortar means try before you buy. Lending between friends is downright awesome, if it works. And a huge advantage is being able to read books on your PCs and Macs. I own Kindle books, but as I currently don't have a Kindle, the ownership concept is a little bit abstract.

There are some more vague advantages: What exactly does an Android OS do for the user in this split-screen unique device? Surely apps or "user-generated improvements" are out of the question. And what early adopter really sweats the dilemma to go with colorful back covers or not?

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Not much here makes Nook look bad, though there are no major specs missing. It's a little thicker than Kindle 2, but it's also substantially shorter, which may be a more significant physical advantage. Max battery life is 10 days, rather than Kindle 2's 14, but we still need to know what that means for the LCD screen. There's no text-to-speech, but maybe B&N just wanted to avoid the lawsuit Amazon got hit with, because the text-to-speech wasn't accessible to blind people. And darnit, no support for Word documents. Guess you'll have to Save As... PDF.