Barnes & Noble is a name commonly associated with books, and it is interesting to note that the company has moved into Amazon Kindle territory with other notable competitors such as Sony’s touchscreen e-reader and Irex’s releases as well, offering their latest e-book reader known as ‘Nook’. Don’t laugh at its name though – Nook is one fine looking e-book reader that will definitely have you reading more voraciously than ever before simply because you won’t mind pulling it out from your backpack for the umpteenth time throughout the day instead of showing everyone your dog-eared paperback (while giving the game away that you’re sloppy enough to mistreat your books).

What makes Nook different from all the other notable e-book readers that we’ve seen and heard about so far? For starters, Nook will come with a pair of displays instead of the usual solitary screen. The top screen is nothing much to shout about with just 16-colors being shown, but the bottom display is where all the action is at – it will boast a full color 3.5″ touchscreen LCD display, where it can be used to browse through one’s library or even be used as a virtual keyboard for input purposes when necessary.

Apart from the second display, the Nook will also support 3G connectivity via vast AT&T’s network, ensuring that you ought to remain connected to the Internet most of the time with a decent speed in order to download content that you like. Wi-Fi connectivity has also been included, further upping the ante and providing yet another compelling reason to choose the Nook over the Amazon Kindle since the latter still does not support a wireless connection on-the-go. Content-wise, Nook will feature native PDF support while handling EPUB and other e-reader formats with aplomb, offering you access to over a million digital tomes in the process. To round off the list of features, the Nook will come with 2GB of internal memory, a microSDHC memory card slot that lets you gain another 16GB of storage space, MP3 audio playback, and most importantly, a community feature that the rest of its competitors don’t have – which is its ability to share your books with friends using compatible devices for up to a fortnight. The catch? Your friend will need to have a device which already has the Barns & Noble software running on it. Expect the Barnes & Noble Nook to go on sale sometime this November for $259.

Press Release