Brick-and-mortar bookseller Barnes & Noble is aggressively wooing readers of virtual books, introducing a smaller, lighter, cheaper version of its Nook e-reader. The Nook Simple Touch Reader is a tablet with a black-and-white touchscreen, the capacity to hold 1,000 books, and a battery that lasts up to two months. The addition of a touchscreen, especially, is a challenge to online rival Amazon's market-dominating Kindle. Can Barnes & Noble's latest gadget take the lead? (See the new Nook up close.)
The new Nook is great, but no "Kindle killer": The Simple Touch Reader is "a major upgrade from the original Nook," and B&N has every right to toot its own horn, says Lauren Indvik in Mashable. But with a Kindle refresh due, B&N's "celebration should be short-lived." Even if the tweaked Kindle comes up short, the Simple Touch Reader isn't enough to get Kindle fans to give up their e-library of Kindle-only books.
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