Comment by npalli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by npalli | Hacker News Reader

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I rooted the Nook Color and it is terrific. Great use as a ebook reader and general tablet. It seems to strike a very good balance between a pure ebook reader like the kindle and the iPad. We have kindle, nook color and the iPad at home. The iPad is useless for holding and reading more than 20 mins. My wife can't pick it up for more than 5 mins. The Nook Color is lighter than the iPad but more functional (browser, apps, zoom in/out) than the kindle. Downsides are -- rooted it is still android 2.1. Moving to 2.2 or 2.3 is not easy (I believe moving to 2.2 required turning off the heat sensor!!). Honeycomb kinda runs in a debug mode (ie., very slow). If the community can create a painless way to move this to android 2.3 it will be a great win.

As to the economics, B&N owns the retail distribution of this product. So a big win over other android tablets is that it doesn't need to tack in another 30-40% markup for retail stores. Apple makes at least 30% on the iPad and the iPad is bigger with much higher BOM costs. So at $250 it is very likely that Nook color is making a decent profit for B&N. B&N has a winner on this one, they own the distribution and don't have to pay for the software development (at least the majority of it).

Same here. I love my Nook Color. I bought it specifically to root it. I own a Kindle which I would much rather read long-form fiction on. The Kindle is terrible for reading academic pdfs and programming books. That is at least 50% of my use for the Nook, the other 50% being general android apps and web browsing. I haven't even opened a book on it yet.

How smooth is the Nook Color for navigating around an academic PDF? When I've played with one inside the store, it seemed a little jerky when zooming on the Nook Color manual PDF.

I think that the stock Nook Color app is not that great for reading pdfs. I use the Adobe one and I've tried one other pdf viewer (that I can't recall the name of now), and they were markedly better.

Question: Does youtube work o.k. over it? flash? Generally want to know if there are any problems with streaming video or audio.

I see this "the iPad is too heavy to comfortably read" comment a lot. I have had an iPad v1 for all of 5 days, but in that time I have read more "long-form" material than the previous five months.

Too heavy? C'mon, really? Yes, it's heavier than a Nook. But to say the iPad is useless is hyperbole at best and misleading at worst.

It may depend on the amount of RSI damage your hands have taken. I've played with iPads at the Apple Store, and I can't hold it comfortably for more than a few minutes.

By comparison, I can hold my 6" Sony Reader (or the Nook Color I had for a few days) indefinitely.

And, yes, I do realize that the iPad is heavy for good reason: it's got a bleeping big battery.

Where do you read though? I'd imagine that it could be too heavy if you do your reading in bed/on a recliner with the device above your face.

I read many kindle books relaxed back on my recliner, Kindle in one hand - is that easy to do with the iPad?

And if you owned a Kindle you'd know exactly what people mean. The iPad is heavy for one handed use, not to mention bulky. It does excel at PDF use though. To each his own. I prefer the Kindle for anything that is just words. Anything else is a toss up between iPad and nOok.

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