I’m a voracious Engadget reader, so when Barnes and Noble introduced the Nook right before Christmas, I was intrigued. My commute takes up four hours of my day, and since I’d rather carry a gizmo than a bunch of books around (to each their own, right?), I’d been investigating various electronic baubles to do the job.

I’d been looking at the Amazon Kindle 2 for a while, but until now, I hadn’t had the courage to take the plunge–$260 was a lot of dough for me to spend on a doohicky that only read books, and I already have a BlackBerry Storm 2 that–which, when coupled with Mobipocket Reader, lets me read e-books just fine.

Only it’s not as fine as “just fine” could be.

The screen is tiny–even though it’s big for a phone, it’s tiny for an e-book–and staring at it for hours on end resulted in some serious eyestrain for me. After reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol on it, I was less than impressed with the whole “e-book on my phone” thing.

So despite Engaget’s optimistic-yet-critical review of the Nook, I went over to Barnes & Noble to check it out.

My impressions:

• The thing was slow. Not just slow, but slooooooooooow. It had to really think about the direction given it by the user–just like Engadget said it did, but I had to see it for myself nonetheless.
• The interface was cool, with the color iPhone-like screen on the bottom and a beautiful E-Ink display on the top. But that lower display is hella bright, and very, very distracting until it shuts off after 30 seconds.
• The foreward to the Nook was written by Dave Barry (whose writing style he obviously stole from Conman). It was hilarious. Favorite line was the opener: “Congratulations on your new Nook! We’re sure it will give you many years of trouble-free enjoyment until next week, when we come out with a newer version.”
• Barnes & Noble’s website did not make it even remotely obvious which of its titles were Nook-friendly and which weren’t. Boo. This is in very stark contrast to Amazon’s Kindle e-book section.

But the real kicker, and why I don’t have a Nook right now? Barnes & Noble are completely out of stock, and they will only start shipping again February 1st. The petulent child in me demanding instant gratification threw a temper tantrum as I dragged it out the door of Barnes & Noble.

But upon further reflection, it gave me an opportunity to sit down and compare–really compare–Amazon’s Kindle 2 to the Nook

It’s good thing, too, because I found some glaring differences:

• The Kindle 2 doesn’t have Wi-Fi, like the Nook. But it does have its wireless service provided by Sprint PCS–unlike the Nook, who gets theirs from AT&T. Boo.
• The Kindle 2 has a built-in PDF reader, as does the Nook. But where you have to plug your Nook into your PC with a USB cable and transfer the PDFs manually, you can send PDFs over-the-air to the Kindle 2–just by e-mailing them.
• The Kindle 2’s battery goes about twice the distance of the Nook’s a week as opposed to four days.
• The Kindle 2 is thinner and lighter.
• I like real buttons. The Kindle has them, and the Nook does not.
• The Kindle’s content-buying website is organized a thousands times better than the Nook’s.
• The Kindle will read your books to you via text-to-speech. A kitschy feature, true, and that’s why it’s at the bottom of the list. But it seems cute, and I was disappointed that the Nook didn’t do the same.
• All the reviews said that the Nook still has several major bugs to work out. And after playing with it for an hour, I can tell that it does, too.

In the end, I purchased a Kindle 2, a leather case, and a light. I can’t wait until they get here!