So you probably know about the Barnes and Noble Nook Color. It's an E-reader with an LCD screen instead of e-ink. You may be saying to yourself, "that just sounds like a small tablet," and you'd be pretty correct! It's OS is (as of this April) 2.2 Android "Froyo" that has what is essentially a skin layered over it that makes it more distinctly an E-reader. The latest update to 2.2 also included the addition of a Nook Apps store, as well as the addition of Flash support for the browser. All around, it's a functional tablet that is specifically catered for people who are going to use it to read.
I'm finding that I'm enjoying reading on it, but I do have a few gripes. When reading a book on the NC, you have many formatting options with regard to text size, background color, line spacing and so on. I'm finding that I prefer the publishers default settings on these things, and so I try to keep it set on those. However, occasionally the settings will actually reset back to the customizable option, which throws off my page number where I left off. Thankfully, there is a bookmarking function, because otherwise I'd keep losing my page. This reset typically occurs when I turn the device FULLY off, as it spends most of it's time in a sort of sleep mode, this doesn't cause the problem to happen. I get the feeling that turning it FULLY off is something B&N doesn't intend for you to do very often, as the sleep mode is essentially off/hibernating, but still it's annoying.
I found this out because I learned that in order to get photos that I download to be available to use as a wallpaper image, I need to power it down completely, which is also a big hassle. I don't know why it's so buggy like this, it seems like a simple error to fix.
The Nook Apps store isn't my favorite. Mostly because B&N is doing their own app store just because they don't want anyone to think of the NC as a tablet. They want to keep it an E-reader, and so the apps that they have chosen to release to their store are specifically picked to make sure that they don't overshadow the "main function" of the NC. This seems strange to me that they don't embrace the full Android market, just because they want to keep the NC as a reader. Not to mention that Angry Birds (one of the only games in the 140 or so Nook Apps they've released) costs 3 bucks whereas it's free in the standard Android Market. The three dollars couldn't possibly be the cost of porting the game to the NC's specific 2.2 skin, right?
All that griping said, I still really love the damn thing! Reading is very pleasant on it. Not to mention that because it is a back-lit LCD, I don't need to have a lamp on to read in the dark! This is perfect for laying in bed whilst my lady is asleep. And now that the browser has flash, it's very functional for reading blogs and news that have embedded videos (not to mention all the porn sites that it's just opened up for viewing.) And because of the size of the screen, the soft keyboard is REALLY COMFORTABLE to type on when holding the NC in the upright position. Your two thumbs can go to town just like on a full keyboard Blackberry. I also shelled out the 3 bucks for Angry Birds, just to see how good it runs, and it's nice and smooth. No jitters, no stutters. The Pulse news app is really nice too, very easy to read, and that one is free!
The thing is great. Go play with a demo model in the store and you'll see what I mean. And if you don't like it, still get one, as you can just root it and boot Android 3.0 Honeycomb on it!
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