The first generation Nook E-Reader is getting fairly hammered by reviewers, including two of the tech world’s biggies: In a Wall Street Journal review, Walter Mossberg says “I found the Nook slower, more cumbersome to use and less polished than the Kindle. I ran into various crashes and bugs. And, while the Kindle’s navigation system isn’t exactly world class, it ran circles around the Nook’s, despite the great possibilities offered by the latter’s use of the touch screen.” In a New York Times review, David Pogue cites “half-baked software” and says “To use the technical term, it’s slower than an anesthetized slug in winter. And it’s buggy. In four days, my Nook locked up twice and displayed an ‘Android operating system has crashed’ message twice.”

Both critics agree on one thing — as Mossberg put it, “At launch, the Nook has the feel of a product with great potential that was rushed to market before it was fully ready.”