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Old 07-06-2010, 06:26 PM   #7
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Posts: 112
Karma: 430
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Studio City, CA
Device: B&N Nook
Originally Posted by sun surfer View Post
1 - I'm having trouble with google books. You know it comes on the B&N website for free books, but it's just confusing to me. For example: I've been trying to download Middlemarch. On the B&N website there are a bunch of free results from google books and I have no idea which to download of the choices as they seem the same. But, when I've chosen one and download it, I open it up on my nook only to discover it's not the whole book! It starts in the middle. Then I tried another...and same thing, but it started from a different point in the middle of the book. Then I tried another - and it happened again! What's going on with that? Is that normal and how can I get it right and figure out which results are actually "good"?
Welcome to Google books! From my experience, this is why the 'over 1,000,000 free books!' from Google is crap. Unfortunately, it's trial and error. If you search a particular title, and get multiple options, there's no way to know which one will have decent formatting and be complete. It's why people like me pay B&N $2 & $3 to buy the classics, because for $2, I don't have to waste time trying to find a complete, well-formatted book.

2 - I also tried to go directly to the google books website and it was even more confusing. I guess a bunch of results on that website can't be downloaded for free, but even if I could find one that was - how do I get it on my nook? Because I've been just putting stuff on my B&N library, then it goes wirelessly to the nook. And I tried using the website on the nook but google books loaded way too slowly because it has a lot of stupid book pictures so I gave up trying that way. Can I get downloads not from the B&N website on the library there for wireless downloading? All this trouble is starting to make the $3 B&N Classics edition look tempting LOL but I'm sure that was their evil goal!
You can only load books wirelessly to the nook if you purchase them from Barnes & Noble. Everything else (including google books acquired through needs to be sideloaded. Sideloading is when you connect the nook to your computer via USB. You'll see a folder 'nook' open on your computer, with a series of sub-folders. Drop the books you've downloaded/purchased into the 'My Documents' folder. When you disconnect the nook, it will automatically refresh and your books will appear in the My Documents library on the nook.

6 - Do you guys know of any tutorials or ebooks/ereaders/nook for dummies type of thing? I'm such a beginner but I can learn and I want to know at least the basics of everything with the downloading/finding stuff/all the basic extras like even converting stuff and all that. The physical use of the nook once things are on it I'm fine with. I'm trying to learn this stuff now but I just find a lot of random info and a lot of it sounds complicated and I'm not sure what to try to dive in first. What I have dove into so far, it just gets me more confused!
I know it's kind of annoying - I was a bit surprised that the nook didn't come with a physical manual in all that clunky packaging. There is an ebook though, on the nook that's a user guide - you'll find it in My Documents. You can't delete it (I don't think), so it's always there for your. In addition to the user guide, there's also a nook tutorial loaded on the device as well. I did the tutorial when I first got my nook, and found it to be helpful.

Other than that - definitely spend time lurking in the mobileread and bn boards. There are some great people here with a lot of knowledge, and you'd be surprised the cool stuff you can learn just by browsing different threads.

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