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Melissa,

I find your reviews of these products to excellent- fair balanced, thorough, and, thankfully, substantive.

There is only one thing you do that, is like a pebble in my shoe. This is selfish, I know, but please stop using decimal values to describe what things weigh. You don't do this with other measures, i.e., "it is .41 feet" you measure it in inches. Trying to calculate what "0.88 or 0.91 pound" actually means in ounces if you wish to use only the English system.

Otherwise, sincerely, thanks for shredding the hype on the Kindle Fire with an honest eye to its strengths and weaknesses and also telling it like it is on the Nook Tablet and Kobo Vox, too.

Thanks for a great review. I've had my Vox for nearly a month now and I agree with most of your review. The main reasons I bought the Vox over the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire were: 1.) Easy access to Android; 2.) The ability to read my (extensive) existing Kindle purchases via the Kindle App; 3.) The ability to read my (very extensive) existing Zinio magazine collection; and 4.) The micro-SD slot. I have been able to install three markets in addition to the one included (Amazon, SlideMe, and App Center) but you cannot use the default android market. However, these additional markets have allowed me to load many apps, including Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker, Winamp, Opera, Words With Friends, Taptu, ESPN ScoreCenter, OfficeSuitePro, Documents To Go, Audible, TweetCaster Pro, AVG Antivirus, and Adobe Flash. Netflix will install but the aforementioned sluggish hardware prevented it from properly playing the video, and speed is my biggest complaint about the device (Netflix works beautifully on the Nook Tablet.) However, I overall find it to be a great reader with which I can also play streaming (or local) audio and work with documents for work. I've even been able to set my documents folder up so that it syncs with my Sharepoint 2010 personal documents folder at work! Overall, if you're a techie and aren't exclusively invested in Nook books, I would recommend the Vox over either of it's two nearest competitors.

I'll have to disagree with you, paw. When comparing minor differences in weight, the ounce fails. Ounces are a fractional measure. So, it's 13 3/4 ounces vs. 14 1/2 ounces. Now one is having to do a bit of math to figure out that it's 3/4 of an ounce and then think about what that weighs (roughly 1 1/2 tablespoons of water). If one uses decimal points with the ounces, you might as well dump them altogether and stick with the pound.

Mind you, I'd be just as happy if the three tablets were stated as weighing 400, 404, and 413 grams.

BB

palane, on 29 November 2011 - 12:14 PM, said:

Your point is well taken about the ounces and like you, I'm OK with grams as I have experience using that unit of measure, too. If you'll check my reply I made it clear I was selfishly seeking the author to change her style to one that is more conventional. She uses inches for measuring L/W/H of the Kobo Vox then switches to decimal based fractions for weight. For me this like having a "pebble in my shoe," that is, a minor annoyance but an annoyance nonetheless. If I'm writing a piece in English then switch to Czech crowns to say how much it will cost... well you get the point.

For its shortcomings as a measurement the ounce is still "coin of the realm" here in the US and I get it when one is 14 1/2 ounces and the other is 13 7/8 ounces.

It never ceases to confound me that the Nook Color with the dual-boot N2A (Nook to Android) micro-SD chip is never mentioned. You can boot into Nook reader ore into Android 2.3, which also supports both Kindle and Nook reader apps. The 8GB N2A micro-SD card sells for about $34, and the 32GB version is $89. Support is outstanding. I encountered a problem whereby email kept loading into the 1GB main partition on the card and eventually made it impossible to boot. The N2A folks promptly sent me a replacement chip by Express Mail--no questions asked. Of course, with neither camera nor voice-in support it is not a true Android phone, and therefore Skype only supports IMing. B&N has been selling the Nook Color at close-out prices.