A Thing I Learned Today
A couple of months ago, I bought a shiny new Nook HD+ for myself. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision – I’d been thinking about getting a tablet for quite a while. In fact, I bought an iPad last year, but only kept it a few days before returning it. The iPad price was just too high for my needs wants (let’s face it, very, very few people really need an iPad, or any tablet for that matter). I’d always liked the Nook Color/Tablet/HD/HD+ as a piece of hardware, but the way Barnes and Noble constrained the Nook universe significantly reduced its appeal. Until this spring, when B&N suddenly realized that there was just huge other part of the tablet world, and many of their potential customers were going there instead of stopping in Nookland. So in early May, they flung open the gates (and cut the price of the HD and HD+ significantly), and suddenly the Nook HD was a contender. And together with a collection of B&N gift cards I was given for finally agreeing to go away and never come back retiring, I made my way to my local Barnes and Noble and bought an HD+. And I love it. I’ve bought a few books, checked out some from my local library (although they really need to beef up their collection), and subscribed to National Geographic magazine (the photos are gorgeous on this thing!). It’s fast becoming my primary lunchtime companion.
But this isn’t about the Nook per se. You know those little protective screens we’re told we need to get for our smartphones and tablets? They’re sort of like the prince’s whipping boy of fairy tales – they take the abuse in the form of fingerprints and smudges) so the glass screen doesn’t have to. I’m not sure why – cleaning the screen isn’t that difficult – but they sell them, and we’re told we should buy them, and so we do. And so I did. The first thing you realize is that it’s impossible to put the protective film on the screen without having little air bubbles trapped underneath. Impossible. Which is why I stopped using them on my iPhone. But, for whatever reason, I bought some for my Nook, and yes, the air bubbles have returned. The other thing that gets trapped is specks of dust, tiny little hairs, and anything else in the vicinity when you try to apply the film. And those little trapped bits are amazingly visible and distracting. I would remove one, and another would leap in from the side. They are determined little specks of irritation. And here’s the Thing I Learned Today: never, no matter how irritated you are by those little specks, do not take a Kleenex or similar tissue and try to rub something off the underside of the film. What you’re left with is a blizzard of even tinier bits of tissue paper that have bonded with the sticky underside of the protective film. And it’s far too late to say “YOU MORON” at this point. The one little speck you were trying to remove is laughing hysterically at you as it points at the myriad tiny bitlets that will never, ever come off.
And THAT is what I learned today.
