Nook Color Rooted — Will B&N Embrace the Tablet?

itwbennett writes "It can browse the web, edit Office docs, run apps. Is it a low-cost, low-function e-reader? Nope, it's a Nook. And now that XDA has rooted it, how Barnes & Noble responds will determine whether the Nook has a tablet future, says blogger Ryan Faas. 'If the device can be turned into a capable Android tablet (which technically it already is) easily, the $250 price tag certainly beats out some of the competition.'"

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Reaction

[Barny]

How they react will likely depend on their price setting method.

If the nook was priced under cost and expected to be subsidised by ebook sales, then they will come down on this like apple. If they are making money on the thing in its own right, they may react like a BSD developer.

Re:Reaction

[noidentity]

Mind you, loss leaders (which subsidised hardware for expensive consumables are) are a distortion of a free market.

Indeed, they shouldn't be allowed to do such a thing in a free market.

Re:Does this mean...?

[_xeno_]

That I can then get _my_ books off of my nook onto my laptop in a readable format?

I don't know about the Nook Color, but for the Nook itself, yes you can: easily. Without jailbreaking.

First, connect the Nook via USB. It's just a USB storage device using FAT32. All your downloaded ebooks will be in "my B&N downloads" on the root of the device. Annoyingly they're named by random numbers, but whatever, you can still grab them and get them off the device.

They will be DRMed, but the DRM is cracked and trivial: the key is the name on your credit card plus the credit card number itself. The idea is that you won't be willing to distribute the key. (Which is somewhat silly, since the key is actually an SHA1 hash of your credit card and name, and therefore you're really not giving anything out.)

Just Google for "ignoblekey" and "ignobleepub" and you should find two Python scripts to handle decrypting the files.

Finally, you'll need an application that supports reading EPUB files on your laptop. Calibre is apparently the best choice for Linux, so try "emerge calibre" and see if that works.

Also, there's no limit to the number of devices that you can copy the epub files to. As long as you log in to the Nook software using your account, you should be able to download books to any device that supports the Nook software. Which doesn't include Linux. Or Mac OS X. But does include the iPad, making me wonder why anyone would want to get a Nook Color.