Barnes & Noble Nook failing to download purchases
It seems that Barnes & Noble was able to deliver some of its Nook e-readers at the last minute for Christmas, but the unexpected side order of headaches for the new owners was an unexpected bonus.
There had been a lot of doubt about Barnes & Noble being able to deliver the Nook e-readers that had been “guaranteed” for Christmas deliver, but at the very last minute the devices did indeed arrive. Then the problems started with actually being able to download any content on to the new devices.
Users who attempted to download e-books on Christmas Day were greeted with a message that said, “Queued: Will complete shortly.” The problem was that the purchases did not complete shortly, and then the inevitable message thread started on the Nook support forums with people trying to figure out what was wrong. The situation was made worse by the fact that no Barnes & Noble employee was responding, so the new users grew more and more frustrated, generating pages of complaints.
Oddly, the second person to post the thread, a user by the handle of “debiant”, hit the nail on the head when they said, “The thing that is wrong is that there are a few hundred thousand people trying to download books all at the same time…”. According to the official response that finally appeared today, that is exactly what happened. The servers simply got overloaded by too many people all trying to purchase books at the exact same time.
While the problem has now resolved, you have to wonder if the Nook servers will be able to withstand the addition of even more users as each additional shipment of the readers are delivered to their new owners. Will this potentially happen each time a new shipment lands at its owners homes, or has Barnes & Noble planned far enough ahead now?
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