The much awaited and advertised Barnes and Noble’s electronic book reader, Nook has finally hit the markets after the company faced shortage of supply for the Black Friday shopping event. Even with the official launch of the Nook, there are speculations that, the new e-book reader might not be able to replicate the success achieved by Kindle, the electronic book reader from Amazon.

One of the primary reason for such opinions being the slow speed of Nook that makes the various functions of the e-reader rather slow, time consuming and would more often than not irritate the users. Amazon’s Kindle in the other hand is a fast paced device that responds instantaneously to user instructions such as opening a book, turning pages and booting of the device. To bring this point into perspective, this is the amount of time that Kindle takes to start up, half a minute or 30 seconds as against the Nook, which consumes an awful a minute and 50 seconds to boot and start its services.

Both the machines are quite similar in look, but differ greatly in functions and factors that really matter. Barnes and Noble has stated that, it is very much aware of the speed issue and has promised to solve the issue with a software update patch to be released in early 2010. Barnes and Noble Nook sports a six-inch, grayscale digital-ink display and also supports wifi, with which users can hook up to 3G wireless network of AT&T and then the wifi to shop for their favorite e-publications.

Below the display screen, Nook has been provided with a touchscreen control screen with which users can set the device settings and navigate through the Nook library and Barnes and Noble online store with ease.

Via Bloomberg & Barnes and Noble.