The last few weeks, I've been dutifully charging and discharging as the battery manual suggested, letting the phone run down until it demanded the charger (<15%).  As of this post, it's been over five days since my last charge, with all functions left turned on (GPS, WiFi, 3G, data synchronization, automatic display brightness), and I still have 30%.

On update: With light use only, the phone lasted another day and a half on that same charge.  I put it on the charger last night just before I went to bed (2am) at which point it was at 17%.  Probably could've made it to morning if I'd left it — which means I'm getting up to a week on each charge.  Very, very happy with this battery.

It installed on my HTC Incredible without a hitch, synced up with my B&N purchase list, but doesn't download the actual books unless you tell it to do so.  It has 8 different fonts for reading and 5 different sizes, but the defaults worked well for me, other than making it one step smaller.  I didn't even need to read the instructions to guess that page turning was with a single finger-flick one way or the other.  If you tap a page, a slider comes up that lets you move quickly through the book, and tells you what page you're on.  To bookmark a page, touch the upper right corner and it folds down just like a dog-ear.  From the menu, you can go anywhere in the contents or your bookmarks.  It appears the program remembers your last position in a book when you go back to it (need to test this some more).

The page-turn animation is kind of cool — it looks as if the edge of the page is under your finger or thumb, and you can partially view both the current and next/previous one.  Or, if you do a quick flick, it just jumps by.  (For those who don't like this, you can change it to a slide, but from the library view, not while reading a book.  I like the animation better.)

The Nook Droid reader also supports automatic portrait/landscape viewing.

The only lack I noticed was the inability to add other non-B&N books, as I can on the actual Noon device… and with that one, I still have to say that segregating my two libraries has been a less-than-desirable aspect.  Of course, my phone came with Adobe PDF reader software already installed, and it was easy enough to get FBReader and WordPlayer free from the Droid Marketplace to read ePub books.

• Although the 1300 mAh OEM battery is way underpowered for a phone with these capabilities, it did hold up a little better than I'd expected (or feared).  Two Sundays ago, I took it on a long hike with the GPS and tracking functions turned on (using the My Tracks app from Google and it didn't run out; on the other hand, at the halfway point it was under 50% so I hit it with a portable USB battery pack I happened to have with me.
• Today, I received a 3rd party battery upgrade from Seidio, a 3500 mAh extended battery which, if it works as advertised, should give me more than 2.5x as much juice.  The only downside is it does add some heft to to the phone, but they did a good job with the replacement back cover.  I might even photograph my left index finger less often, as it gives me more to grip when holding the phone horizontally.  We'll see if it actually does the job, power-wise; the instructions advise several charge/recharge cycles to get maximum function.  (On update: I went on a 4 hour hike with GPS and Tracking on, used it normally (but not heavily) the last few days, played a couple YouTube videos, checked weather radar, taken maybe a couple dozen pictures, have not turned off WiFi, BlueTooth, network synchronization, or GPS — and after about 48 hours, I still have 39% charge.  I'm planning to let it get down to about 20-25 before I recharge.  Update-update: I'm consistently getting more than 4 days per charge on the new battery.)
• Noticed that while at home the phone battery actually lasts longer if I leave the WiFi turned on.  Probably this is because I'm in a marginal cell reception area and so the phone has to run through more power to stay connected that way and to access the 3G network.
• Another minor complaint others have noted is that in direct bright sunlight the display can be difficult to see, but I never found it impossible.  Still, other than the old plain black LCD displays of yore, I've never seen a color LCD that worked well in total sun.  And a little shade isn't that hard to find.
• Speed.  Oh yah, this thing is fast.  No matter what I'm doing with the phone, whether browsing or using the GPS functions, I have never noticed it slowing down the least bit.  The only time it gets slow is when I'm someplace where the reception is poor and I'm trying to do things like download GPS maps or upload map tracks or messages.
• Played a few YouTube videos on it — they look great, and the sound out of the little speakerphone speaker is surprisingly good.  Even better with headphones.
• Many devices like this come with a little bit of available memory and an empty additional memory slot.  I really like the fact the Incredible started with about 6GB internal RAM free and an extra 2 GB microSD card.  That said, I've upgraded the card to 8GB Class 6, which was dead cheap to do at about $20.  I could've gone higher but don't really need it (yet) and the 16 GB price jumps to $60 which seemed excessive.  A shame iPhones aren't upgradable at all, and require a factory return to change the battery.

I might post a more formal review later, but for now–

Pros:

• Droid operating system (meaning the phone can be updated)
• Super fast and responsive
• More apps than you can shake a stick at
• Great camera (8 megapixels)
• Amazing how clever people have found ways to integrate the camera, accelerometers, compass and GPS into mega-useful applications.
• User-replaceable battery and microSDHC memory
• Simply fun to use and operate, and highly customizeable

Cons:

• Display is nice, but a little difficult to read in full sun
• Battery life, as many others have noted, is poor (but not insurmountably so)

Favorite apps:

• Google Maps, Goggles, NightSky, and My Tracks
• Instant access to weather info (including radar)
• Tricorder — an actually functional application that uses all of the phone's sensors

Overall impression?  Total geek-gasm.  I keep finding neat things this smart-phone can do.  As for the battery problem?  I've a couple solutions.  One is I have an expanded-capacity battery on order, since the OEM original 1300 mAh is way too underpowered for a device like this; it really ought to have been 2000 mAh.  The other is an external battery pack — and I happen to have a nifty $20 one from Tekkeon which uses rechargeable AA batteries.  Finally, it helps to be smart about having certain features turned on, such as the GPS, WiFi and/or Bluetooth, but fortunately there are tools and widgets that make turning these things on and off very easy.

Finally, I take back some of the bad things I've said about Verizon Wireless in the past, issues having to do with billing and their unwillingness to let me back out of a contract when I was going to be living overseas for several years.  However, there just weren't that many choices on carriers, and there's little question that Verizon has the best coverage, especially here in New Mexico. 

We have a pre-paid AT&T SIM-card account and the signal quality has always been lousy at best, especially any distance away from metropolitan areas.  When we were down visiting Carlsbad Caverns, there was no coverage at all.  I eliminated Sprint and T-Mobile for similar reasons.  I've taken that AT&T registered phone on hikes and could count on it getting a signal only about 50% of the time.  Yesterday, I went on a long hike deep in the Sandias and although sometimes the signal was weak, I never lost it entirely.

The other reason is only Verizon had the Droid phone I wanted.  I might've been willing to settle for the newer Motorola model, or maybe another HTC…but the Incredible had the specs.

So anyway, the reason I take back at least some of my criticism is because when the new phone arrived via FedEx, I had issues getting it initialized and registered.  So that resulted in my spending over half an hour on our land-line phone with Cornelius, the Verizon customer service rep.  The upside is I was able to get a really sweet & memorable phone number, and they reduced my two year commitment to just one, with eligibility for a new phone in 10 months.  Not sure how that last part works, but what the hey.  Thanks Verizon, your attempts to improve your customer service have been noted and appreciated.

At the time, my only complaint was they didn’t have a 64-bit firewall.  Now, with their latest offering, VIPRE Antivirus Premium, they do.

It’s light-weight, runs like a dream, and found little embedded malware bits way off in my USB archive drives — stuff that NONE of the other products ever picked up.

VIPRE isn’t a memory hog.  Runs as well on a little WinXP netbook as it does on a quad processor Win7 Pro desktop machine.  Does a great job of keeping itself updated, watches for rootkits, malware, bad processes, viruses on USB sticks, email attacks and browser intruders — including a check at boot time.  When running a scan, it doesn’t render the computer unusable, like OneCare did for me.

One of the really cool features?  You can get a home site license for one reasonable price, allowing you to install the program on as many computers as you and your immediate family own.  I think we have five or six computers registered here, including some pretty old ones.  In case you’re not sure, you can download a fully functional (non-crippled) 30 day trial version.  And from what I’ve seen, it’ll even uninstall cleanly, which is something McAfee refused to do (I had to do a system restore).

I have yet to find anything that ever worked half as well as VIPRE does.

For better or worse, I was in the first bunch to get one, having pre-ordered early enough to get first dibs.  Better, in that I got one — and I understand these things are now going for up to twice their retail value on eBay, and current orders won’t ship for at least 6-7 weeks due to the backlog.

Worse, in that as an early adopter, I get to experience the various flaws and problems that come with a 1.0 release product.  On the other hand, I did avoid some, in that I wasn’t opening my Nook up and connecting to the registration servers for the first time on Christmas day, when I hear they melted down due to the load.  And to their credit, they’ve already released a point release upgrade on the Nook’s operating system, downloaded automatically via the device’s free 3G network or over wifi.

I’ll not bother with a review of features and stuff that you can see for yourself at the link at the top of this post.  Instead, I’ll just go over my own impression, what I’ve liked and haven’t liked.  This is my first eReader of any kind, aside from laptop computers and PC desktop software, so it took me a while to get used to it.

First, the tactile:  The Nook feels pretty good in the hand, or both hands.  I quite like the fact I can page forward or back using buttons on both sides of the device.  You can also page with finger-swipes across the touchscreen at the bottom, but I haven’t bothered with this method.  It doesn’t feel like a toy, and in fact the leather cover/protector I got for it just enhances the impression.

The visual: The electronic ink display is remarkably sharp and easy on the eyes — I can read for hours without eyestrain, and the ability to change the font (3 choices) and size (5 choices) is nice.  I also rather like the customization feature, in that I could load my own wallpaper (what displays when you’re not reading) and screensavers (what displays when the device is asleep but not off).  The small color touchscreen at the bottom is a nifty feature — I like it way better than the multitude of tiny buttons I see on Kindles… There my only complaint is it really shows finger oil smudges too easily and I find I’m frequently cleaning (maybe one of those iPod protectors would help, if trimmed to fit).

The functional:  I’ve already added 16GB of MicroSD RAM to my Nook, but it comes with 2GB and truthfully I haven’t even filled that yet, not even close.  But it’s nice to have that much space to expand into as I like.  It also supports a variety of book formats, including PDF, PDB, and EPUB — and with the tools I already have, I can turn just about everything I own (including some old Microsoft Reader LIT books, as well as my own Word docs) into PDFs the Nook can handle.

Actually, with Calibre, a free open-source utility, I can convert into any Nook supported format from just about anything else.  Calibre also has a feed-subscription feature that lets me compile online stuff for reading later on the Nook — although the only way to get it onto the Nook is via USB cable.  I’ve enjoyed reading NASA news releases, Scientific American, and a couple newspapers in this way.

The WiFi (b/g) and Wireless 3G capabilities are quite cool, downloading books I bought on B&N’s site automatically.  And it was a pleasant surprise one morning when I woke up the device and it began downloading the software update; additional goodness: I then turned on the WiFi (usually leave it off to conserve battery) and the Nook switched to using that much faster connection without my doing anything else.

The speed and responsiveness of the Nook, especially on page changes, was really not good in the initial release, but the software update fixed about 80% of that.  Unfortunately they then introduced a problem where a lot of people, myself included, experienced intermittent loss of bookmarks and last-read-point saved information.  Not good.  Word on their support site is they’re working on it, as well as a few other glitches people have reported.  Again — this is a 1.0 product and I have expectations accordingly.  I’m actually surprised it hasn’t been worse, and that although there have been some hardware issues and returned Nooks, the bulk of the problems are software based (and therefore fixable).

Areas for improvement:  For some reason, battery life isn’t what it ought to be — and others have reported this.  Not like a week between charges; for me, it’s been more like every 3rd day.

The page transitions could be smoother and faster.  The 1.1 software was a big improvement in this, but it could be better.

Three fonts and five sizes is nice…but this could be expanded upon in the future.  Also, it does need a zoom/pan feature, so you can look closer at illustrations and graphs.

They put a lot of effort into the design aesthetics and even the packaging for the Nook.  C’mon guys — throw in a 25-cent stick-on/removable smudge protector for that bottom touchscreen at least.

They definitely need to beef up the ability to organize a given ebook library, and there’s no reason why there is no organization at all in the non-BN section of what is stored on the device — none, not even alphabetical by title.  I think it sorts by the order in which you put it on the device, but I’m not sure.  Ideally, people should be able to set up categories, keywords, sub-libraries, that sort of thing.  BN-purchased books can be sorted by author, title, and so on — but I’d also like to sort by genre or keyword, or to browse just among a subset of books, among all my Nook-stored books.  My actual preference would be that the Nook let me mingle both BN and non-BN content in one big searchable library.

There’s also an MP3 player function, and the sound surprisingly good even on the little mono speakers on the Nook — but the player itself is pathetically underfeatured.  Anything you put on the Nook is played in alphabetic order by the embedded title tags and that’s it — no picking an album, or even manually organizing your music into separate folders and playing those.  I have a cheap USB stick MP3 player device I got years ago and it can handle rudimentary folder organization better than the Nook.

The experience:  It took me a couple days to really get used to reading on the Nook…but now I enjoy it very much.  True, nothing will replace the look, feel, and smell of a book — paperback or hardbound.  However, I’d not experienced the way an eReader device can disappear with respect to the reading experience.  No matter what I’m reading, what’s in my hands is roughly the same — the page buttons are in the same spots, the display is the same. When I need to put it down, I don’t even need to remember to mark my spot, it just stays there (well, most of the time…again, they’re working on this).

For some reason (probably the cleverness of the e-ink display engineers), the crisp blackness of the text and the not-too-white background are extremely easy on the eyes.  My spouse has had cataract surgery and is plagued by lots of floaters — she hates reading, because of the latter — but reports to me she has no problem with the Nook’s display and finds it quite readable.

So, my grades:

• Aesthetics: A (looks good and feels good in the hands, with or without a protective cover)
• Features: B- (but room for improvement, and the fact they can do so on-the-fly is a big plus)
• Display: A (very easy on the eyes)
• Responsiveness:  B- (still a touch laggy at times and with certain books, but better with the 1.1 software than it was with 1.0)
• Expandability:  A (can add memory and the battery is replaceable; the Kindle doesn’t have either of these features)
• Connectivity:  A- (let me transfer files wirelessly between my PC and the Nook and that minus comes off; let me do it FROM the Nook and it would become an A+)
• Battery Life:  C+ (acceptable, but not spectacular)
• Format Compatibility: A- (add TXT and Word Doc to this and I’d remove that minus)
• Library Organization & Searching: D (BN-purchased content organization gets a B, but anything else I put on there can’t be organized or searched at all, so that part gets a failing grade, alas)
• MP3 Player:  Pass (as in took this pass/fail…and didn’t technically ‘fail’; really needs SOME way of letting people play music in the order they wish, short of manually editing embedded MP3 tags to add ascending numbers as I did)
• Graphics file support:  C+ (JPGs, BMPs, PNGs, and GIFs all display nicely, but there’s nothing resembling any kind of viewer or browser for looking at them — this would be an easily implemented feature, too).
• Product quality in general:  C (again, room for improvement via software update, but the early units were rushed to production and the bugs do show)

Overall assessment:  Would I buy this again or recommend buying it?  Yes.  Would I have opted for one of the other eReaders out there, based on what I know about this one from experience and my prior research on the features, reviews, and capabilities of devices such as the Kindle or Sony’s eReader?  No.  I like the Nook.

Why, despite the flaws I noted above would I have gotten the Nook anyway?  The main reason is because the underlying hardware is solid, in my opinion — it’s the operating system which needs improvement, added features, and bug-fixes, but all of these can be addressed and broadcast to all the Nook owners, whether they got their on December 9th as I did or will be opening theirs in mid February.  Based on the fact there’s already been one such software update, I have faith there will be more and soon.

Will play with it for a few days or a week or so, then post a review.  For now?  I rather like it.  Glad I pre-ordered.

I usually keep my computer running most of the time because it’s also a publishing weather station on the ‘Net…and sometimes I forget how long it’s been since a reboot (which tends to happen now only when there’s been some major software installation or update).  By now, on Vista, I would absolutely have had to restart every day or two given the frequent Dragon Age: Origins gameplay, iTunes, and late evening video watching.  I did install a memory recovery utility called CacheBoost, but even with that back in the Vista days, given heavy use, I’d say I had a week max before the entire computer bogged down.

Absolutely it boots faster than the previous Vista installation, with noticeable ‘spinning icon’ activity ending at about 2/3 the time it used to take.  Shutdown is faster, too.

I’m liking the Task bar for the most part and really like the pop-up thumbnails (Aero Peek) when you mouse over an active application’s icon, but I do wish it was a little more customizable.  Like for example to choose to have active applications move to the right of the inactive ones.  And to alter (increase/decrease) the Aero transparency effect.

No regrets on the upgrade, and I’m really super happy I opted in early for the half-price advance purchase (we got 2 Win7 Pro upgrades for $99 each…normally, it’s twice that).  I’m sure the ‘Home Premium’ edition would’ve been good enough, but I always like a few extra bells and whistles — and in this case, it was the instanced WinXP feature.

The cons: Given it was physically possible for me to upgrade from V64 Home Premium to either Win7 Home Premium or Win7 Ultimate (the top-end product), it seems clear to me it was purely a marketing decision to restrict people from directly upgrading from Vista Home Premium to Win7 Pro (which in features sits right between Win 7 Home Premium and Ultimate).  It’s obvious there’s nothing even vaguely resembling a product or software limitation as to why I had to do the custom clean install and was barred from the simple upgrade.  Otherwise, Vista Home Premium to Win 7 Ultimate wouldn’t have worked as an upgrade path.  Really dumb, and not a good idea to annoy your customers in this way for no good reason than what has every appearance of greed (as in, “If they want to upgrade to a higher product, let’s make ‘em all buy the most expensive version.”).

That said, I’ve decided to see the glass as half-full — in that it actually is a good idea to do a fresh OS install now and then, and in general is the better choice when upgrading if you have the time.  It’s just a pain in the butt to have to reinstall everything though.  Fortunately, I’m well versed in how to manually move settings and files back — hence within an hour, I had both Firefox and Thunderbird looking exactly like they did, with all my settings and files and emails, yesterday morning.  Today, I’ll take a stab at the rest of my usually installed programs…which I might as well do because we’re somewhat snowed in here (about 5 inches worth outside right now).

Some advice and caveats:

• Have lots of disk space available on your main system drive before attempting the upgrade, because your entire previous Windows installation will be renamed Windows.old…and with the new OS being added, it can chew up a lot of space.  On my system, Windows.old is 115 GB.  One suggestion:  Pre-uninstall programs you haven’t been using much, because you’ll likely need to reinstall them again anyway.
• DO back up your documents, emails, music, photos, videos, and other personal files.  It’s just dumb not to, especially when performing software surgery at this level.  Also, if you know how, make a backup copy of your entire “Documents and Settings/(user)” folder (where ‘user’ is your login name).  Having this backed up can, if you’re a clever sort, enable you to restore a lot of stuff on your own, including your browser and email settings, iTunes, etc.  You’ll still need to reinstall the programs, but right from the get-go you can have ‘em working and operating just like they did before.
• If performing the upgrade from an existing working Windows installation, at the first system reboot, do NOT let your computer boot from the DVD-ROM disc in the drive.  In fact, upon each subsequent reboot, you STILL don’t want it booting from the DVD disc.  If you do, it will act as if nothing has been done and prompt to copy your old Windows OS files a second time…and I have a feeling it has the potential to mess up the upgrade process majorly.  Just let your computer boot normally from the hard disk.  For a couple seconds, you’ll see a screen that’ll let you pick between the upgrade or to boot into your previous (and still functional) operating system — with the default auto-selecting to do the upgrade.
• I noticed that the “completing installation” phase took a very, very long time on my system.  I have no idea if that was because some piece of hardware wasn’t responding as it ought to or that part of the installation actually takes that long.  Microsoft ought to have put in more indicators as to what was actually happening, some better progress indicator.