Does NOOK require monthly service contract?

No the nook does not require a monthly payment. In fact the nook and kindle fire are wifi only devices so you can't get a cellular plan for them. Kindle does sell a Prime service for 79 dollars a year I think and with it you get free shipping and you can stream videos from amazon. You are supposedly can also get a free book a month. This is totally optional and you don't need it to enjoy your kindle fire.

There are some ebooks that are free, but not most. Most range from 2.99 to 12.99. It all depends. I'm seeing most good books go for around 9.99. Also each company gives some books away every week. Nook has a book every friday for free. They aren't the best but they are nice to read sometimes.

Range is dependent only on where your getting wifi. The free areas like mcdonalds or barnes and noble can be used on either machine.

The batter is internal and you can't replace on your own. Both should last you for a few years no problem.

Capacity is an interesting difference. The kindle fire comes with 8 gigs, approximately 6 left for you to use out of the box. You can use your storage for anything you want, either from amazon or from your own stuff at home like music or videos you have on your computer.

The nook tablet has 16 gigs of space, but only one of those can be used by you from your stuff on your computer, the rest of the space is reserved for stuff you buy from barnes and noble. Nook tablet also gives you the option of adding up to 32 gigs more space through the micro sd card.

So I usually tell people this: if they are going to be using amazon to buy their content, their music, their movies and books and add them through there you should stick with the fire, the nook doesn't have movies for sale and you can't buy music from the B&N online store for your nook tablet.

If you are going to be adding most of your movies or music from your personal computer and don't care too much about buying it from a major online store then the nook tablet is better because it comes with more memory and you can expand the memory with an sd card.

So Fire if you plan on buying your stuff from amazon like music and movies and books, Nook if you have music and movies on your computer and just want to move the stuff over and buy only books and magazines from the online store.

As for the online stuff and speed they both match up pretty well. You can see some speed tests online between the two and yeah maybe one second difference between the two, but you won't notice it when your using it in your everyday.

Let me know if you have any other questions. And yes both can have their manuals downloaded, in fact if you want a manual you can probably download it from the internet already, just go on to the web sites for each and look in the support section.

Books make your sentence structure, reading level, spelling, vocabulary, and generally are definitely more educational than T.V.

when you are watching a movie or tv set it is very easy to get distracted and multi task, where reading a book, it usually has your full attention!