Hi, Joyce. I’ve not had my hands on a Nook. From everything I hear about it, it’s at least as good of a device as the Kindle, generally speaking. I personally went with the Kindle mainly because of the positive track record Amazon had already established with me in terms of customer service, price, and products. Now that the Kindle is supporting library lending, there is not much in my mind that the Nook has over the Kindle (especially the new “touch” version of the Kindle), unless you find you like its user interface better or prefer shopping for e-books via B&N instead of Amazon.

The “special offer” Kindles come with screen-saver images that are advertisements for Amazon and its products, and the home screen will also display special offer ads in a chunk of the screen (at the bottom, I think?). Therefore they come with a lower price, since they include those ads, but many people have found the special offer ads to be a bonus, not an annoyance, and so are more than happy to get both a discounted price on their Kindle and receive those special offer ads.