Barnes & Noble Fired Its Nook Engineering Staff

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Wait, people actually still use a Nook? Whoddathunkit?

Barnes & Noble laid off its Nook hardware engineers, according to a source that tipped Business Insider. The engineers were let go last Thursday, according to our source. This follows Barnes & Noble dismissing the VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein in January.
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I love my nook glowlight. I would have bought a kindle, but at the time, kindle didn't have a lighted display available and the nook made more sense since I do most of my reading at night and prefer not having a light on. In my experience, it wasn't the hardware that lacked with the nook, but their marketplace. They just can't compete with amazon in that regard. They might have been better off selling their e-readers for a huge loss.
 
Wife uses a nook and she likes it a lot. She bought a 2nd one after the first. If you just use it for reading, which is what she does then its great. I dont see the point of all the extras. Just read books on them. Also amazon can take away books from your device without your consent so never would buy that one.
 
Come on, stop posting that the employees were FIRED, they were Laid Off.

There IS a difference.

Fired implies wrong doing on the part of the employee. And in a lot of states if one is fired, one cannot collect unemployment and foregoes a severance package. "Laid off" does not explicitly assign any wrong doing to the employee. Be nice to those that lost their jobs.

The company that mass fires, or mass lays off people on the other hand is pretty much just as screwed either way. ;-)
 
I love my Nook Glowlight. I've got it rooted (because I can) plus it has physical buttons which is awesome. I also got it for roughly half the price of a Kindle Paperwhite.
 
bbf said:
"Laid off" does not explicitly assign any wrong doing to the employee. Be nice to those that lost their jobs.
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TBH, if you put on your resume that you engineered the Nook then it will be hard to deny any wrong doing.
 
Thuleman said:
TBH, if you put on your resume that you engineered the Nook then it will be hard to deny any wrong doing.
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I don't see how it was at all an engineering problem. The device wasn't priced or positioned correctly in the market and/or didn't offer services that people found worth the cost. Very little of that has to do with the stuff and engineer does and a lot more to do with the company's original design objectives and its marketing.
 
Darth Millennial said:
I use a Nook and a Nook HD+ everyday. :cool:
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I use my nook for books and sometimes a movie now and then which has a 32gb micro card in it for holding more goodies.
I also have a kindle fire that I won, but you cant upgrade the memory which makes it pretty much useless for all but books.(8gb version has 4.3gb free, not sure on the 16gb version)

I would love to get a full windows tablet sometime.
 
For two grandmothers in my Family, the love their Nooks. They are easy to use e-readers. A lot of Libraries have systems set up to lend e-books for use on Nooks. They really work well, especially for non tech savvy types. They just could not compete with Amazon. Maybe they should have tried working with Google or selling the hardware unit...
 
I have two of the original Nooks and a Nook HD+ and all get used regular. My HD+ is used for Netflix, as well as two magazine subscriptions and reading, has never had an issue, works perfect.

I choice Nook over Kindle due to a larger ebook library and the ability to expand the memory.

This news saddens me but then again I am about to move away from my Nooks to w Windows Tablet.
 
I have a Nook Simple Touch, and a Nook Glow Light. I chose them over kindles because I like removable storage. I have a 64gb microsd, and if I ever manage to fill it up (books only, I am at 42gb and not climbing all that quickly), I will just get another microSD.

I snagged a few extra Simple Touches when they went on sale for 19.99, just in case of damage/death.
 
i have a nook- first edition with the touch pad on the bottom, a nook tablet and a nook hd+

initially the tablet and hd+'s problems were not hardware related, the hardware is great- for what they are- it was their marketplace- which sucked. no google play, now that they come with that, they are good media tablets-i use my hd+ all the time for movies and reading. of course the first thing i did to both tablets was rip out the stock nook OS and installed cyanomod (tablet is running cm10, hd+ is running the lastest 10.2.1) i even run the kindle app on them.

as for books. the first thing i do for books is sync them to my computer, then -cough cough cough- remove the drm via a 3rd party program so that i can put my e-books anywhere i wish.(for my personal use only-and no i actually mean that i don't share with anyone, i just want my books to STAY my books, forever)
 
bbf said:
Come on, stop posting that the employees were FIRED, they were Laid Off.

There IS a difference.

Fired implies wrong doing on the part of the employee. And in a lot of states if one is fired, one cannot collect unemployment and foregoes a severance package. "Laid off" does not explicitly assign any wrong doing to the employee. Be nice to those that lost their jobs.

The company that mass fires, or mass lays off people on the other hand is pretty much just as screwed either way. ;-)
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m-w.com definition of fire:

2b : to dismiss from a position

Sounds like fire is a perfectly acceptable term to use.
 
Thuleman said:
TBH, if you put on your resume that you engineered the Nook then it will be hard to deny any wrong doing.
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Do you have any actual reason to say this? I've never heard of any complaints about the Nook technologically, it just wasn't as competitively positioned as Amazon's Kindle.
 
Nook HD+ here.. love it. Not sure what I'd replace it with when it goes, maybe another HD+.
 
lenardo said:
i have a nook- first edition with the touch pad on the bottom, a nook tablet and a nook hd+

initially the tablet and hd+'s problems were not hardware related, the hardware is great- for what they are- it was their marketplace- which sucked. no google play, now that they come with that, they are good media tablets-i use my hd+ all the time for movies and reading. of course the first thing i did to both tablets was rip out the stock nook OS and installed cyanomod (tablet is running cm10, hd+ is running the lastest 10.2.1) i even run the kindle app on them.

as for books. the first thing i do for books is sync them to my computer, then -cough cough cough- remove the drm via a 3rd party program so that i can put my e-books anywhere i wish.(for my personal use only-and no i actually mean that i don't share with anyone, i just want my books to STAY my books, forever)
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We have CM11 now.. no problems for me, it's rock solid.

http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?device=ovation

I think you'll need an updated recovery though if you EMMC. Head to XDA if CM11-sdcard is your thing.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2600572
 
i remember getting a nook color a couple months after it came out, screen was pretty fantastic at the time and it is still chugging away. pretty awesome that there is still CM development for it (at least up until CM10, don't know if it has continued or not)
 
Thuleman said:
TBH, if you put on your resume that you engineered the Nook then it will be hard to deny any wrong doing.
Click to expand...

The nook may not be the best tablet out there but it certainly isn't something to be ashamed of listing on a resume. Go find some kittens to kick next.
 
This is too bad, because the Nook was a lot better option than the Kindle Fires for a long time, until they stopped producing newer versions and let Amazon get ahead of them.
 
I have had 3 Nooks, loved every single one, still use the Simple Touch glowlight. It is the best e-reader I have used. Almost considered going to Kindle recently because of all the trouble B&N is having, but honestly their system has been pretty good and i already have a ton of books on it.

For those with the Nook Tablets, I would follow pbassjunk's suggestions. I know a lot of people that have rooted and replaced the software with great success.

Also, isn't Microsoft still looking to buy Nook? They own something like 20% or more now of it. There could be a bit of cleaning up by B&N before they sell it off, if they choose to. Also it was stated that they didn't lay off all of the staff, they apparently kept a few around.
 
i'm sticking with 10.2.1 atm, i don't pay attn to that much, it works for everything i want on a media tablet, though a few sites don't work...correctly on my browser due to my insisting on having an ad-blocker active pretty much 100% of the time.

i'll switch when 11 gets an official non nightly version.
 
This is really foolish. People really liked the Nook. My parents both have a Nook Color, my sister has a first gen with the color bottom screen, my aunt has a Nook Tablet, and my Uncle with a Nook Tablet HD. They're all working fine and perfectly capable of everything they need them for.
 
Wait, they were still making Nooks? I thought those things died off years ago.
 
What's up with the fucktards who sit around in Barnes and Noble who just read, don't buy anything, and just use the free Wi-Fi?
 
Lasted nook e reader sucks, but my glowlight nook is still running strong.
 
The Nook book software (on both the dedicated devices and on other devices) is better than Kindle.

But, B&N is right to stop trying to compete in hardware. With the low price of the Nexus 7 (and other competing tablets), buying a retailer-specific device just doesn't make any sense. Sure, you can root, side-load, etc., but why go to the trouble? The only reason left is that Amazon hasn't made their video service available on Android, but that only applies if you're committed to both Amazon video and watching it on the tablet. Apart from that, buy a tablet that makes everything Android offers available by default.
 
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