My wife Lili gave me Nookie!

My wife gave me a Barnes and Noble Nook ebook reader yesterday! It was awesome! And it was awesomely frustrating! In the past I have used my PSP game system to read books, but I had trouble with it because it would not work with some of the large books I have (techie books for learning about Microsoft servers and other things). It would crash the PSP when I tried to read them. Now, I have a hand held reader that will work! But life is never that simple, is it?

The technical specs for the Nook say that it can read any book that you buy and download from their website on the Nook. It also says that you can copy files from your computer to read. This is the main reason we bought it. They say that it can support three types of ebook files and some graphics and music files (not that I need that since I can use my iPhone or my PSP for graphics and music). The ebooks can be PDF, PDB, or EPUB.

Okay, now I downloaded a program called Calibre (free) that can convert almost any ebook format to almost any other. So I was able to quickly convert some TXT files that I had into EPUB. Those are working fine. I have a collection of PDF files (mostly tech books) that I tried to copy and use right away. This is when I entered the Trouble Zone! After copying a lot of my PDF files to my Nook I disconnected it from my computer full of anticipation and ready to start perusing my wealth of knowledge that I could hold conveniently in my hand. But, then I used the navigation menu to see my documents list and was surprised that it told me it was checking for files and then skipped back to the main display without providing my list of files!!!

I am very technically inclined, and when software doesn't work for me I take it personally and get to the bottom of it whatever it takes! Well, unfortunately for me, this would not be an easy path to go down. I browsed all over the Barnes & Noble website for any hint about this error, to no avail. I sent my web searching tendrils across the internet in hopes of any crumbs of information to answer my problem, to no avail! The best I got was some rather sketchy references that the Nook may have trouble with some of the formatting in PDF files. Possibly with large graphics, nothing specific though.

Not being one to quit, I tested what happened when I deleted different files and put them back. Trying to see which ones worked and which ones did not. I even checked the properties on the PDF files to see what was different with the ones that worked and the ones that did not. At first, I thought it might be that only ones that supported fast web view that were working, but then I found one that did not have fast web view that DID work! Then I thought that it was the PDF version, because the ones that worked were all 1.6, but then I found some that were 1.6 that did NOT work. The only semi-conclusion that I came to was that it has to be some of the graphics are too big to display on the Nook.

This is very frustrating, because that would mean that I would have to reformat all the PDF files that don't work. Luckily, the Calibre program can do that. It just means more maintenance. Now that I have worked around the problem, I am thoroughly enjoying the Nookie my Lili gave me! I have several fantasy novels and technical books on it. I even have the collected works of Robert Burns on it! It takes some work to gather the book files and reformat them, but it is VERY cool to have them on the Nook!

At first I was frustrated with the navigation on it because my book list is several pages and the navigation takes a second to move from one book on the list to another, but then I figured out that the page turning buttons on the side of the Nook can turn the pages of the book list! Much faster to navigate it now! I am now studying for a Microsoft certification (70-431) Installing SQL Server 2005.

Lili, thanks for the Nookie! Whoohoo!!!

Blog ya later!