Tis the season for fake gifting: In which I buy a Nook Color for the wife and use it myself for two weeks

One day soon, I'm going to write a long post in which I explore why I think I'm so inclined toward buying gadgets. It will be a deep and cathartic exploration and we'll call come away from it feeling as though a great weight has been lifted. But in this post, I'm going to focus on one of the ugly symptoms of said disease: Fake gifting.

Now, fake gifting is maybe not the right way to put it. I mean, when I buy these gifts, I fully intend to give them to the person they are intended for. And usually said gift is something I think the giftee will really enjoy. But I wouldn't be a thorough gift giver if I didn't try the gift out first to make sure it's in perfect working order, right?

Case in point: The NookColor I bought for my wife as an Xmas gift a few weeks ago. My experience with ereaders has been a little spotty. I got a Sony Reader for myself last Xmas and used it a good bit, but ultimately, the e-ink screen was too dark to read indoors without Klieg lights at the bedside and the interface was clunky. And there was no wifi. I never understood how much that would matter until I was in bed, finished with a book, wanting to read another and I had to get out of bed, go plug the thing into the computer, etc., etc.

And yes, the wife likes to read. At first I was thinking Kindle, but the e-ink (which I think is a ridiculous boondoggle of a technology) made me hesitate. If I wanted e-ink, I could just give her the Sony, and I wouldn't wish that on my enemies, let alone the woman who feeds me. I have my iPad and I read on my iPad. But there's no way she was going to let me buy her an iPad and there was no way I was giving her mine, so when the NookColor came out I thought it could be the best of both worlds--within the price point that she would let me spend and back lit LCD tablet optimized for reading and purchasing books.

So one evening after a dinner out, I convinced her to drive to the Mall so I could grab one for her. I got the last one in the store. The Barnes and Noble folks there acted like I just got the last piece of pizza on earth. I was pleased with myself. Of course, when we got home, I broke it out right away and started fiddling with it, purely for quality control's sake. I would have to, I told her, run it through its paces before I could give it to her as a gift. So I charged it up and went to work testing it out.

The interface and form factor are both pretty nice. The screen is as bright as you need it to be and I found myself liking the sepia-tone pages on a slightly dim setting. The NookColor was more comfortable to hold while reading than my iPad. It was easy to cradle in the palm of my hand and it had a nice soft-touch rubberized backing. The interface was responsive and the reading experience was fine. We read a lot in bed and I found that I could read it in the dark with the brightness turned down and experience no real eye strain. There are a lot of people who say the LCD screen cause eye strain when reading, but I haven't had that experience. YMMV.

Both of us already buy Kindle books for the iPad/iPhone/Andriod phone and I was anxious to see how the Barnes and Noble bookstore fared against Amazon's selection. Sadly, not well. the first few titles I looked for were not there, including The Windup Girl, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards this year. Not a good sign. I looked for more books and my success rate was hit and miss. As a control, I looked for the same stuff on Amazon and found every single book. Sure the selection will get better over time, but I'm interested in what is, not what will be. This is a $250 gadget here. I want the world! In the continuum of ebookstores, I put the Barnes and Noble store in between the Sony Reader Store (which seems to be geared toward readers of romance novels) and Amazon, which is a full-service store with just about anything you could ask for. I finally found a book I wanted to read from the BN store (Into the Forest by Jean Hegland) and read it in a day or so on the NookColor. All in all a fine experience.

So far so good, right? Well, not so fast. Yes, the NookColor is just about the best ereader I've had my hands on. Yes, it does run Android (1.6?!?! Really?). Yes, the reading experience was pretty good. Yes, it could be a fully functional tablet as well. There are apps (Pandora being the only one worth even opening). But it's not great. Not in the way it needs to be at that price point. Too many disappointments.

After the initial blush, I fell out of love quickly. The little glitches in the OS grated on me, the clunkiness of trying to access the web became tiresome. Even the cute little "Nook Hook" design element bothered me going into week two. The NookColor has been described as an in between device, as in in between a tablet and an ereader. And I agree with that assessment. Unfortunately, that also leaves it in between being worth the $250 price tag and not. It's a nice bauble and it comported itself well, but when $250 is a chunk of change that makes you think twice before you spend it, the NookColor just ain't worth it.

"But wait," you must be saying . "You bought it as a gift. What did your wife think?" Honestly, she never even touched it. At the end of my trial I asked her what she thought and she said, "I'd rather have a new phone."

So there you go. On the "Stuff I Don't Need rating scale," the NookColor gets a "Shrug, pretty cool, but not all that" from me and an "I'd rather have a new phone" from our co-judge, my wife. The NookColor went back to the store and the wife is now sporting an iPhone 4. More on that later.

Seriously, if you have the dough to spend and read in darker environments and you really want an ereader, this is the best one out there. Just be warned, that ain't saying much.

Wallet Moth rating: