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B&N Releases Nook Tablet To Rival Amazon Fire
jfruhlinger writes "It looks like there's competition in the low-cost media tablet space — and that Barnes & Noble is determined not to go the way of Borders. Barnes & Noble today announced the Nook Tablet, an Android-based tablet with better specs than the Kindle Fire (though it's also $50 pricier). The Nook Tablet will allow Hulu and Netflix streaming and sideloading of content, but won't have access to the general-purpose Android App Store."
It will be able to access the Amazon App Store
One of this big draws of the Kindle Fire is that has Amazon Silk built in. Although Slashdot denizens might have qualms with that technology, there's no doubt that Amazon can offer a smoother browsing experience than Barnes & Noble's device.
I have a nook color, with CM7. I have the google market, amazon market, both nook and kindle app and netflix. I am sure if I cared I could have hulu premium as well.
There's just one question:
Will it root?
... the already-exisitng, easily-hackable previous Nook Color is now $50 less--just US$199. Nice! Very tempted...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It should be noted that Apple is publicly happy about the Amazon Fire and its rivals because it further contributes to Android fragmentation.
If you can turn on "Unknown sources" and install APKs, you can probably install the APKs for Amazon, Soc.io, and SlideMe. I have no citation for certain, but it's far more likely than not.
And unlike the Kindle Fire, the Nook Color has an SD card slot.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Hey, Apple also has a tablet, why doesn't Slashdot do an article about that saying it is competing with the Kindle Fire. Sure the Kindle Fire came a whole year after the Nook Color... but apparently Slashdot thinks it was first.
Without access to the Android app store, it's not much different than the higher end Chinese clones.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Does it have a color e-ink display? No? Then I'll pass.
With CM7 it makes a really great tablet. I use mine all the time. You can install the Nook app, so you really lose nothing at all. Netflix works great on it.
From TFA:
> [the kindle fire]'s 8G bytes of storage is not enough to hold media for those situations where the user is not connected to the Internet. "You're not always going to be connected to the cloud," he said.
All together now: Bingo!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Looks like more market fragmentation. Now if I write a tablet app I need to host it through the Google, Amazon and B&N marketplaces. Though right now I think I would skip B&N as their claim of "over a thousand apps" is not that impressive. Otherwise the specs look good on the new Nook, bit better in many ways then the Kindle Fire. However I am less impressed with the interface overlay and am uninterested in the Netflix integration as I dropped them durring the "troubles". So no regrets over my Fire pre-purchase.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I didn't like the stock reader, nor the Nook app. I guess if I bought my books from BN, it would still be nice, but since most of my stuff comes from places like Project Gutenberg, Baen, etc... I found that I like FBReader much better (need a separate reader for PDFs though, but the stock/Nook app sucks for those, too)
... is that using the touch screen is difficult at the very edge of the screen. This is really only a problem with some applications that put buttons in the corners, like Tweetcaster. Also, the Nook reader is very hard to use unless you pump up the dpi to make the graphical elements larger.
But that kind of stuff is pretty trivial.
Also, a dual-core 7" tablet for $200 is pretty sweet, especially if it's as hackable as the original.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
What does Silk buy you? Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire have only WiFi connectivity, not 3G, so it isn't compensating for low-speed connection. Both have dual core 1 GHz processors, and if you can't render a webpage quickly with that, then something is seriously wrong. The original Nook Color with a single core 800 MHz could handle browsing just fine, although flash was somewhat slow.
So the only thing you gain by delegating some processing to a third party is battery life, but the Nook Tablet already has a longer battery life estimate than the Kindle Fire anyway. So what's the advantage?
To be honest, it just seems to be a speedier nookcolor... I like my nookcolor, and it does everything I want a tablet to do, plus it has easy access to lots and lots of books to read on it. To be honest, B&N had a competitor to the Amazon Fire already.
Not quite - if you install the standard Nook app, you lose "More in Store" and "Read in Store" - I assume the stock Color had these. (My eInk Nook does.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I still prefer kobo and wait eagerly for the next release.
I'm running CM 7.1 on it and am very happy with it. I have it overclocked to 1.2Ghz and I can run both the Nook and Kindle Android apps on it. I've been playing a lot of Madden 12 on it though and I need to set the graphics to medium or low though for decent performance. I think that B&N will do well if they have most of the popular apps available for it with the speed bump and dual core processor. Having the Hulu and Netflix apps is huge and the ability to have 48 gigs of storage is nice. I rip my DVDs using Handbrake and they run just playback just fine on the screen. I prefer the 7" screen to the 10 inch screen on the iPad and most tablets.
Not only that, you can install CM7 to boot directly off the SD card, so if you wanted to go back to the stock firmware it is just a simple matter of booting without the SD installed. If you go this route, make sure to use a Sandisk SD card though (even the class 2 Sandisk is faster than the class 10 of most other brands for this use case, since the other cards are only fast at very large block transfers).
At the very least, the new tablet will help that.
But honestly, I think the thing they need the most is to open up it's software. Access to the Android App Market would help. But I think the best idea would be to sell it with a Linux OS, and a web browser (firefox/chrome/ whatever) that includes an app for Barnes & Nobles store.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yay, a slight revision of the Nook Color... meh. Won't someone just release a color E-ink tablet already.
Now, the Android tablets, as much as people might talk about their abilities, do not have a source of free content. They have a source of integration through Google, but most other tablets do as well. There may be a source of exclusive free content, but who is going to do it? Google has not done so thus far. BN could do it. They could give away tracks and video and books like Apple and Android does, but will they make enough money to cover the free content? As it is we see that Hulu and Netflix is the big thing, but Hulu cost $120 a year for mobile devices, versus $80 for Amazon Prime. Netflix also costs $120 a year, and the availability of any given video on a mobile device is always in flux as the licensing changes.
BN has the power to put content and integration behind an Android tablet and make them competative.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
B&N is coming to the "media" tablet party a bit late. They should have found a way to trim $50 off the tablet to directly compete with the Fire. By not doing so, they won't be converting too many of the faithful kindle crowd.
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On top of that, the Nook Color is programmed to try to boot off the microSD card first. So "hacking" it is just writing a CM7 boot image to a microSD card, putting it in, and restarting the tablet. If you ever want to go back to the original Nook Color experience, just reboot it without the card.
Any word on if the new Nook Tablet has the same feature?
Won't this tablet also be just a terminal for all content served by the BN servers, even if they pass through other content, as Amazon's Kindle Fire is? So all content is mediated by BN.
That's like buying a TV from CBS, to which CBS can send whatever "necessary" modifications to content from other TV networks. Yeah, it's like getting a cellphone locked into a single mobile carrier through which all calls are funneled. But look at how that's working out with cablemodems when the company is Comcast (and plenty of others): competing services, like downloaded movies or VOIP, get substandard service or worse. And any company can go the Comcast route any day it chooses.
--
make install -not war
Saying "Android" is like saying "computer" - it's a very vague term that embraces a wide variety of hardware. I've got a Samsung Galaxy S2 and it has absolutely no problem scrolling pages (containing flash, if desired ;)) smoothly as silky butter on a skillet. Plus, if you think iOS works without event queues, you are sorely mistaken :)
$50 in this price range is a huge difference. Think video cards for comparison. These are really 2 different products at 2 different price points. We'll see what buyers want.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What he's saying is that the Android tablets he tried so far show their underlying technology can't keep up with what the user wants to do.
That's what people mean when they say "Apple stuff just works". Screw the damn technology mumbo-jumbo, just do whatever the hell I want it to do.
I bought a Nook Color last Christmas and have been pretty disappointed. The eBook prices are ridiculously high. They are often higher than the physical book in the store or Amazon. They also seem to be consistently higher than Amazon's prices for the same eBook (which are also too high). The reader's behavior doesn't really seem to match up to the specs. It feels pretty slow, and the screen response is extremely poor. Many of the applications that come with (such as crosswords) are not functional because the touchscreen response is inaccurate. Battery life is pretty good when you're using it, but if it's set aside for a couple of weeks and not used, the battery will drain in the meantime.
Unlike the Nook Color, the Kindle Fire is part of a successful ecosystem. ;) In all seriousness, I wonder how much Amazon Prime and the rest of the ecosystem, such as book lending, will impact this.
If the Kindle Fire turns out to be a Fire Hose, then there's no comparison.
I8-D
I've been pretty happy with the Nook Color. I mostly use it with free or sideloaded ebooks. Paid ebooks are way too expensive considering there's no dead wood, shipping or many other costs as regular books have. I went with the Color over an e-ink reader so that I can use it for light email/web usage while on the road. I dual-boot Honeycomb from a microSD card for apps not available through B&N's limited app store (which is most of them). If The Nook Tablet is as easy to dual-boot as the NC, I might consider upgrading in a few months.
Android screens are rendered widget by widget, pixel by pixel for every screen modification (scroll, zoom, item state changed, etc.) and that means a lot of work is being done for every frame. This is a legacy of the original spec not requiring a dedicated gpu. Modern devices are getting them but the acceleration is sort of hacked into that gpuless model. iOS on the other hand didn't start with such a limiting assumption and paints everything to an open gl surface with a fixed camera. Most screen modifications like scroll and zoom are just basic gl transformations that don't require a re-rendering event. That's why it looks so smooth.
In Republican America phones tap you.
No, not much difference at all -- except for rendering and a few new things, slashdot is pretty much what it was ten years ago. Look in the archives, you'll see news about new Linux distros, new MS OSes, new hardware (especially CPUs).
If you want to see different stories, submit them. If you don't want to see certain stories, vote them down in the firehose.
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The Nook Color can be found for $149 Pre-Owned and $79 for Nook B&W Simple Touch @ Barnes and Noble. At those prices I had to buy both. Color: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/cert-pre-owned-nook-color-barnes-noble/1100666155 B&W: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/cpo-nook-simple-touch-barnes-noble/1102471846
Meh, tell that to my old iphone. It took 20-30 seconds to display text after I typed it. You can imagine what scrolling around webpages felt like. The thing was painful. :(
Saying "Android" is like saying "computer" - it's a very vague term that embraces a wide variety of hardware.
No, it's like saying "Windows". It's vaguely an operating system and embarasses a wide variety of hardware.
Plus, if you think iOS works without event queues, you are sorely mistaken :)
[whoosh!] By chance, do you do UI work for Google?
Meh, tell that to my old iphone. It took 20-30 seconds to display text after I typed it. You can imagine what scrolling around webpages felt like. The thing was painful. :(
iPhone 3G on iOS 4.0? Been there and it was painful. I missed calls because of the crappy performance. Web pages would take 3 forevers to load... Still, once they did, they scrolled flawlessly in the "you're moving a page with your finger" sense. No choppy animation or pixel by pixel jumping of the page contents. Score one for using the device's GPU to do your UI rendering, huh?
Exactly right.
I can't figure out if it was oversight or intentional, but that thing was unusable. Oddly I had problems moving the pages too, iirc. Maybe I'm remembering it worse than it was... but it was definitely a bad experience.
Here is a quick review of a few sub $300 Android tables, a few even sub $200. These tablets easily compare with the Color Nook, or Kindle Fire.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
IMO: If you want eInk, get an eReader, otherwise get a real Android tablet, instead of trying to convert an LED eReader to an Android tablet.
Reasons:
1) Android tablets are as cheap, or cheaper. The Lenovo Ideapad A1 costs $199 at Amazon. The Vizio 8" costs $189 at Costco. And BF is coming up.
2) Android tablets have way more features, like cameras, and GPS, and external micor-SD slots.
3) Don't have to fuss with hacking, or worry about "bricking," or worry about voiding warranties.
4) With a real Android tablet you are not locked in to a particular vendor's format.
IMO: If you want eInk, get an eReader, otherwise get a real Android tablet, instead of trying to convert an LED eReader to an Android tablet, or use an Android phone.
Reasons:
1) Android tablets are as cheap, or cheaper. The Lenovo Ideapad A1 costs $199 at Amazon. The Vizio 8" costs $189 at Costco. And BF is coming up.
2) Android tablets have way more features, like cameras, and GPS, and external micor-SD slots.
3) Don't have to fuss with hacking, or worry about "bricking," or worry about voiding warranties.
4) With a real Android tablet you are not locked in to a particular vendor's format.
Here is a quick review of a few sub $300 Android tables, a few even sub $200. These tablets easily compare with the Color Nook, or Kindle Fire.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Why get an LED eReader when Android tables are so inexpensive?
Or better yet, get a real Android tablet like Vizio 8" or the Lenovo Ideapad A1.
Also, a dual-core 7" tablet for $200 is pretty sweet
A few years ago, that was true. Today, Android tablets are as cheap, or cheaper. The Lenovo Ideapad A1 costs $199 at Amazon. The Vizio 8" costs $189 at Costco. And BF is coming up.
I consider the performance to be sub-standard, especially for web browsing. I suspect the Kindle fire is far superior in this regard.
Maybe I'm too skeptical. Until I actually see it, I will have some doubt. Although, you certainly could be right.
Not quite - if you install the standard Nook app, you lose "More in Store" and "Read in Store"
I always found those features a little strange. Especially "read in store" -- aren't you in, y'know, a store full of books? What's the advantage of downloading the book to your device if you still have to physically be there? And then the only B&N in San Francisco closed down (not that I would have gone anyway, it was a terrible store) and the whole thing became moot.
Breakfast served all day!
Content is content ... get it where ever you want, the Nook is just a device for displaying it. Here's my anecdata: I get most of my videos off the web, converting them to the appropriate format with Handbrake directly onto an SD card which I then stick into the Nook. I get ebooks from a number of sites, reformat them (if necessary) via Calibre, and copy them over the same way. The device never has to connect to B&N or any particular network.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
E-ink can't handle the display rates required to actually be usable.
E-ink is only good for displaying STATIC images. It can't handle refresh rates of 60Hz ... maybe in the range of seconds, but not enough to play any kind of animated media at a decent speed. It will never be able to handle even a "slow" game like Pong.
I've been looking forward to buying an eReader for a while now, and knew the next version of the Nook Color would be just around the corner, especially given the recent Amazon announcement. I'm currently moving to Oklahoma City (PCS to Tinker AFB), so I can't turn in my pre-order just yet as I don't know what my new address.
I plan to use this to do CBT (CDC) upgrade training, as the newer Air Force courses are distributed in PDF rather than paper form.
Anyway, I'm totally pumped about this. *geek*
Because you can search through their online inventory and read it from a couch in the cafe, instead of wandering around to find it. Also, I'm fairly certain you could read stuff that was available online but not available in your local store.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?