A Friendly eReader Service Message: on reading comics on tablets, how to speed up your Nook HD+ and other stuff

A few things I have learned about eReaders recently worth noting for those who haven't yet discovered (the hard way):

Reading Comics on eReaders and Tablets:

This one has a few no-brainers, but there's definitely a "test the waters" approach to reading comics on ereaders right now. I've been buying more comics in electronic format lately (mostly the stuff that looks interesting but isn't part of my Batman/DC Universe obsession) and have a bit to say on the subject that may save you some headaches.

First, it goes without saying that you want a decent high resolution tablet for the job. The Nook HD+ is the best bang for your buck in this department, but the Nexus 7 (2013 edition, my son annihilated my 2012 edition) is also rather nice. Larger screen size helps a lot, but a high resolution can accomplish much.

So here's what you want in a good comic ereader:
1. Decent screen resolution
2. Decent screen size; 7 inches on the Nexus is the bare minimum...I get a lot more enjoyment out of the Nook HD+ screen.
3. An app that lets you expand/contract pages
4. A retailer that sells you a decent hi-res copy

So who meets the requirements? Each of the following were tested on my Nook HD+ and Nexus 7. I disqualified the Microsoft Surface as I have the 1st generation basic model, which has a 768X800 resolution, and that's acceptable but below what I consider the minimum standard for a comfortable viewing experience (the 1080p resolution on the Nook HD+ has really spoiled me).

Kindle App and Comics 
Test Files: Uncanny X-Men, Savage Hawkman, Wonder Woman

It borders on the tortuous to read comics on the Kindle App. The only Kindle device I own is the Kindle Paperwhite, and that's not a device you want to use to read comics on (trust me) so I used the Kindle App on the Nexus 7 and Nook HD+ in absence of a Kindle Fire. Unfortunately the Kindle App's strategy for letting you try to read comics on it is a "double tap to expand the panel" feature that basically magnifies roughly where you tapped, and also glaringly shows that the file sizes of the Kindle comics are smaller than the competitor's because they are lower resolution. The Kindle does not let you expand/contract pages nor does it let you take full page spreads and view them length-wise by holding your tablet sideways; you are locked into one view mode, essentially.
Rating: F

Nook Store and Comics 
Test Files: All Star Western, Dungeons & Dragons Graphic Novels, Cutter

The Nook store lets you download decent file sizes quickly, and the resolution is very nice. The reader lets you expand and contract the page as well as view it lengthways by turning the tablet on its side. You may pay a few cents more on average for comics in the Nook store but the quality and ease of use is well worth it.
Rating: A

Google Play Store and Comics
Test Files: Savage Sword of Conan, Fatale, Cyberforce, and lots more

Google Play has the largest download files and it shows: the pages are crisp and look great on the Nexus 7 as well as the Nook HD+, making for the best reading experience by far. The experience was light night and day from the Kindle's lower res, limited functionality editions....and in fact I started this process with Google Play, so the net result was a wave of disappointment at the low quality on the Kindle. The Google Play store often has some decent sales but the prices are, like Nook, slightly higher on average....but the tiny extra cost is well worth the much more satisfying reading experience.
Rating: A+

Anyone who reads comics knows that as a medium the comic artists and writers take advantage of the full page and sometimes two-page spreads for effect. If the ereader can't accommodate this then it's not worth the time. Whoever designed the "panel exansion" idea for the Kindle App doesn't understand that you don't just read "one panel at a time" nor can you really grokk what's going on in a panel when your double-tapping only highlights part of the image. Luckily Google Play and Nook both understand this and offer a better suite of tools to do the job....with Google Play winning out by virtue of it's excellent hi-res (and very large) images.

Next up...

What to do when your Nook HD+ is slow (alias: how to make it work instead of chucking it out a window)

This is a real thing. Apparently many Nook HD+ tablets acted a little...weird....after the updates last year that embedded Google Play into the device. I don't pretend to understand the history of these updates, but if you have a Nook HD+ and it acts like it's operating under an XP-powered OS on a netbook from 2005 riddled with spyware then fear not, there's a quick and easy solution that does not involve violence:

Deregister and Erase in your machine's options, then re-register and download all your stuff again. It works like a charm....I have no idea if that means the updates from last year were staged in a way that led to suboptimal performance or corruption of files to cause a slowdown....or it doing this simply cleared out whatever invisibe homunculi were torturing the poor tablet, but after I did this I had my Nook HD+ back and it runs as smoothly as my Nexus 7. So take this tip to heart!

And Lo' Did the Nook HD+ Descend in price for the Day of Fathers

...and so then did I, at the behest of my understanding wife, buy one. She thought about getting one as well, but it didn't seem to support all of the games she liked playing (yet).

I hadn't planned on upgrading my old Nook Tablet to a Nook HD+ until I heard about Barnes & Noble's decision to go open-platform (more or less) on the HD line with access to Google Play. Doing this instantly made the tablet more attractive. Knocking $120 off the price (I paid $179 for the 32GB Nook HD+ edition this Saturday) even for only a week was a great way to overcome consumer concerns about the long term viability of the Nook product. After all....even if B&N were to collapse, in theory it would still be a viable (albeit no longer updated) tablet with access to the Kindle App and all the other wonders of Google Play.

So I've had it one weekend now and here are my quick observations on what I already see as being an indispensable sixth sense---a third eye---to me:

Love the Size and the Resolution

The Nook HD+ is the larger style tablet, at a 9 inch display with better than 1080p (it's sold as 1080p but scales higher) resolution. For the first few hours I felt like I was managing a larger toy version of my Nexus 7. By day two the Nexus 7 and the old Nook Tablet looked like the toys and it was getting hard to remember how I survived on such a tiny screen. The resolution is stunning....as good or better than the Nexus 7, and it blows the old Nook Tablet out of the water. If you've only ever had a Nook Tablet (or older) this will shock you at how beautiful the resolution is.

Performance is Great

I don't know if these games were optimized for larger screens, but games such as Need For Speed, Max Payne and Asphalt 7: Heat were suddenly much easier to control and play...in fact I'd all but given up on these games on the Nexus 7.

However, the HD+ is a dual core processor and not quite as impressive as the Tegra Quadcore in the Nexus 7. I saw that the Modern Combat series (3 and 4) were optmized for the HD+ so I downloaded MC4 to see how it compared to the copy on my Nexus 7. It ran fine, but I noticed that it felt ever so slightly more tasked than it was on the Nexus 7. A very minor observation, though; it still ran fine.

Google Play Library for Nook HD+ Makes it Robust

While the proprietary store for the Nook has more software available for the HD+ than older Nooks, it's still anemic compared to the Google Play store. Surprisingly few games on Google Play did not indicate compatibility on the Nook HD+....a few oddballs my wife likes, none of which were graphics-intensive, so I guess they haven't been optimized for the Nook HD+'s specific vagaries of design. A few more graphics-intensive games that run on the Nexus 7 (like Backstab) were not on the Nook HD+ options....yet. This thing runs Dead Trigger, Modern Combat 3 and 4, Need for Speed:MW and more without a hitch, so I suspect anything in the store that's not available for it will be soon enough.

Competition is Good

Being able to buy from the Nook store, from Amazon Kindle App, Google Play Books or potentially any other number of retailers is a blessing. It may look bad for B&N on the surface, but guess what....their the ones with a tablet that will let you buy from the competition, meaning they out of necessity need to consider their pricing competitively. If you have a Kindle Fire, you're locked in to Amazon's prices (which are admittedly usually slightly better). I don't see a lot of incentive to buy from the Google Play store, though. It honestly feels like the place you buy books a few times here and there for those odd trips when you're bored, or want to have a book to read to impress other people....you know, non-readers. Kindle App and Nook Store are both much more robust and easier to search.

Holy Cow I can Read PDFs on this Easily

The Nook HD+ screen is big enough that looking at a full PDF page is perfectly feasible. The speed of the readers available is mixed, but you can download any number of PDF readers from Google Play to get the job done (I still favor Adobe). Although for Pathfinder books I still prefer to rely on Paizo's "Lite" reader editions, most other PDFs flowed great and searched fine. It's good enough that it may change my RPG purchasing habits, to lean more toward PDFs for some products, and print them out for actual use less.

Comics, on the other hand...

I still find comics and graphic novels to be a pain. Services like Marvel's Reader apps were less than stellar, shutting down without a wi-fi connection. The actual tactile experience of reading a comic in-hand is incomparable to wrestling with it on a screen, even a high res 9 inch screen. This could be a generational thing, though.

Consensus

For the price I paid, the Nook HD+ was a seriously good deal. It's going to be my go-to  reader from here on out. I'll update if something changes (i.e. it explodes or otherwise does something unexpected and undesirable) but after one weekend with it I can't remember life on a smaller tablet screen. As for my Nook Tablet, I think I'll be retiring that one, and will look at refurishing it into a learning tablet for the kid. He's almost at the point where figuring out how to work a device like the Nook is more important than figuring out how to take it apart....as soon as we're past that threshold, I'll gift him the Tablet!

ADDENDUM: There's one bit I forgot to mention. The Nook HD+ uses its own proprietary plug-in for power/data, and is not at all compatible with the normal cables you expect for most tablets. In fact it's not even compatible with the older Nook Tablet cable. This does mean that, should you need to seek out a cable replacement, BN will be the only place to find it. If I do figure out that this style of cable is made elsewhere or has a third party version I'll let you know (or if you are familiar with it, let me know!)