So I just bought House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohen, from the just-launched Barnes and Noble e-book store. Long story short, it works pretty well, but there sure as heck isn’t a hint of polish on this thing.
So here’s how it worked. I went to barnesandnoble.com, typed in the name “William Cohen,” then clicked “Read Now,” indicating that I wanted to buy the e-book version. It downloaded to my Desktop (well, Downloads folder). Then I had to download and install the reader software.
Nothing too hard. From the reader software, I then navigated to the .pdb file. A little window popped up asking me to enter my name and credit card number to unlock the file. And now I’m reading about Wall Street’s excess!
I even tried reading the file offline and it worked fine. So if you’re trying to read an e-book on the commuter rail on your laptop, without any Internet access, you should be OK.
For the thousandth time, I don’t have an iPhone, nor do I have any intention to, so I couldn’t test that. But, as far as the Mac version goes, it’s not too different from reading a PDF. And that’s not a bad thing.
A bit of a misleading/hope crushing title. Software = eReader, while hardware = eBook Reader. I thought there for a second that this was going to be an article on that elusive B&N eBook Reader that we keep seeing here and there.
“Cohan” not “Cohen”
Watch out Amazon.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2714821
Some people prefer not to steal everything they can get their grubby little hands on…
Yeah seriously, way to not make any point omar
It sounds very similar to the Amazon gadget, is it as good though. Cant be a bad thing reading like a PDF.
I tried to download a “free” ebook to test drive. First it did a full body cavity search (name, email, etc., etc.). I fed it low value information ;-), which it accepted (I was able to create a user name and set a password without BN emailing the address I entered). Not happy, but a grudging “pass.”
Then it wanted a valid credit card number so it could “charge” me $0.01 which they would refund after I “purchased” my “free” book. I’m sorry, but I’m not going there. FAIL!
I’m not sure why they want loads of sensitive information for a “free” book, but they lost my interest.
P.S. I put “free” in quotation marks because the value of the information that they wanted from me was hardly free. FAIL!
The disappointing part of the site is that it does not link to your BN membership so you do not get the 10% discount you would get on a paperback. Once they fix that, I will be more enthusiastic about it and actual buy a book.
I still like the Amazon kindle better…
I am really interested in the Barnes and noble e-reader software but the problem is that i don’t really know how to get started.I have a lot of ideas to share but I’m lacking the technical know how.
Could anybody please try to show me way out.
Thanks for your concern.
As far as I can see, this looks like the same ereader software and format used by fictionwise. So is fictionwise providing all bn ebooks? Fictionwise books even end in .pdb.