Turning Your E-Reader Into a Cheap Tablet

grahamsaa writes "NPR's Weekend Edition aired a story today on how rooting the Nook Color can turn it into a full fledged and relatively inexpensive Android tablet. The story claims that the process takes about half an hour, and only requires the purchase of a Nook and a microSD card, and points listeners to a YouTube tutorial on how to root the device. Could this signal a change in how mainstream users see devices like this? Could rooting Android devices like the Nook ever become mainstream?" We ran a story about this in December, and I haven't seen a flood of hacked readers anywhere so I doubt that tablet makers have anything to worry about.

Comments

Thumbs up to Barnes and Noble

[arob28]

For not suing everybody like Sony is.

Re:Thumbs up to Barnes and Noble

[taustin]

They plan to make money selling books, not book readers. The more readers they sell, the cheaper each one is to manufacture, and the more readres they sell. People who root aren't very likelyt o buy books, but the cheaper the price, the more people who will buy books will buy readers.

Plus, B&N are a brick & mortar store, and always have been. Unlike Amazon, where having employees dealing one on one with customers is an expense to be minimized, at B&N, it's the whole point.

Time

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

I'd put the process at closer to an hour. The big time sink is figuring out WTF is going on and what you want to do about it - there are no less than four major options, with a dozen smaller decisions to make, all wrapped up in a slightly hermetic nomenclature. It still ain't for the weak kneed and non-technical. HOWEVER, the nightly CyanogenMod 7 build is getting really close to maximum awesomeness - video playback doesn't work quite right, bluetooth doesn't work quite right, but both of them work. By late april it should be a clear winner, and that will make the decision much easier.

Re:Time

[ThatsMyNick]

Nook Color comes with LCD, not E-ink.

I love my Nook Color

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently own a nook color that I rooted with Eclair (2.1). For me I wanted something in between a phone and a full laptop for when I am sitting around in waiting rooms. It serves this purpose perfectly. I would not give this tablet to anyone who tech illiterate though, as it is still rough around the corners. Given that the hack is only a few months old, I am extremely impressed with its current abilities, especially with its low price tag, and am eager to see how it continues to progress. Some of the cons are that it is not 3G, does not have a camera, and its sensors may be lacking or the hack making them available seems to be lacking. Though the hack does bring some entirely new functionality to the Nook. It was found that the WiFi chip also includes Bluetooth which is turned off in software. It is now available in some of the ROM's and now provides the ability for Bluetooth keyboards and SIP calling.

Overall, I could not be happier with a $200 tablet. It really does everything I need it to do and then some. It has decent battery life and retains all of the standard Nook functionality in addition to the features provided by rooting it. I consider it a great value when compared to the Galaxy tab as I find it difficult rationalizing the missing features are worth an additional $400. Moreover, so far it seems that B&N have been amenable to people rooting their Nook. As they should, since I buy books from B&N that I wouldn't have previously, and am encouraging others to buy their hardware and books because of their attitude towards the hacking community and the versatility of their hardware.

It really seems like one of those rare situations where everyone is winning. Fortunately, B&N doesn't seem to be in a hurry to shoot themselves in the foot with both barrels, a la, Sony, etc.

Re:Full Fledged Android Tablet?

[basotl]

The Nook Color has the same amount of ram as the Galaxy Tab. I don't know what you are talking about there.
http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/nook-color-technical/3483-nookcolor-full-specifications.html
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_p1000_galaxy_tab-3370.php

In addition rooting allows overclocking the Nook Color which greatly increases the speed.

Re:Full Fledged Android Tablet?

[ZosX]

Uh it has the same memory as a galaxy tab and can be overclocked to 1ghz. While the arm core may not be as fast as a galaxy, it can't be nearly as slow as my ancient G1 at 600mhz, which is happily running froyo at the moment and has the least amount of RAM of any android device. (192MB) If 512mb in android isn't enough for you maybe you need to lay off all the widgets and background apps stealing CPU cycles. I would imagine that a lean Nook running froyo would be more than just usable.

The galaxy tab is nice, but also over twice the price of a nook. For some speed isn't everything. I mean what are we really talking about here? Another 2-5 seconds to load a web page? Another 2-3 seconds to load an app? Does everything have to be immediate? I don't see the appeal of the tab either. The honeycomb based tablets are the next generation. It will be interesting when that level of hardware starts hitting close to the price of a nook now.