Nook Color or Not?

[stick2e]

Hi all,

Just trying to decide if I will go this route or not. I like the idea of having a cheap table but I do have a few questions and I will appreciate some ones responses.

1. How stable is Honeycomb in the Nook Color?

2. It's 100% functional? if not, whats not working?

3. It's a good idea to get one?

Thanks for any help guys....

 

[digitalslacker]

Honeycomb isn't great right now but it's usable. It will only get better over the next few months.

Its just sluggish and choppy. I think some stuff is still missing from the market too.

Overall I'm really happy with my Nook Color. I say get one.

 

[dcreed]

I'd say get one. I'm using froyo off the SD card and am very happy with its performance, stability, and overall usefulness.

I'll probably make the move to Honeycomb when it's official. (I do enough testing of people's software in my paid job...don't much care to do it in my free time, too.)

It's not perfect, but it's close. Saving $300 off another tablet and not having a monthly service fee, I can deal with pretty close to perfect.

 

[joeybcdt]

I used autonooter and it works great. My only complaint is i wish the nc was bigger.

 

[simon.ponder]

3 os

Well, for starters you can dual boot from internal and still boot another from the sd. So, if you really wanted, you could boot nookie froyo, which is a pretty stable version of froyo, and also boot gingerbread like phiremod, which is somewhat stable. Then you could also boot Honeycomb from the SD, thus triple booting three different versions of Android.

 

[dbeedle]

Thinking about getting a nook color myself and have a quick question.

can it mound a usb card reader? I'd like to use it to read CF cards and SD cards from cameras. Can it do this?

 

[Biffer]

Thinking about getting a nook color myself and have a quick question.

can it mound a usb card reader? I'd like to use it to read CF cards and SD cards from cameras. Can it do this?

There is no USB port on the NC. It could read a microSD that you stick in it, but you can't attached a USB card reader to it.

In response to the original post, I bought the NC solely for the purposes of making it into an affordable tablet. I have no intention of using it as an e-reader (aside from downloading a stray library book via overdrive). Since the CM7 ROM was released, I am very happy with the NC as a tablet. It needs a little work, but is usable now as a daily driver - flash and many apps work fairly well on it. It will only get better. Honeycomb is a little rough right now, but when fleshed out in the next couple of months, I am hopeful that it will be great on the NC (though it may be a bit under-powered?) -- if not, I will be happy with CM7. I bought the NC with the intention of having it keep me content for several month until the rest of the Android tablets are released and tested. It will more than serve that purpose for me.

As an e-reader, it seemed fine during the time I used it for that (although I can also read books with apps through CM7). It is less than stellar in sunlight, but that is to be expected with a color reader.

 

[dlcullen]

Definitely buy it! I bought an Archos 70 internet tablet for myself, the nookcolor for my husband. I sold the Archos last week and bought a nook, it makes a very nice tablet. Just running it stock with B&N latest update, rooted it's a great tablet!

 

[dquangt]

i have an additional question...in one of the vids i saw on the web they were able to run the kindle app from the market on the nook. did i see that correctly? i'd really like the choice of getting a book from either B&N or Amazon depending on who has the better price. also, if you can do it, is it only available on a certain version of android? i believe i watched a preview vid of honeycomb when i saw this.

 

[digitalslacker]

Definitely buy it! I bought an Archos 70 internet tablet for myself, the nookcolor for my husband. I sold the Archos last week and bought a nook, it makes a very nice tablet. Just running it stock with B&N latest update, rooted it's a great tablet!

this is day 3 with the Nook for me and I'm at the point where I'm ready to just sell the Viewsonic gTab i got a few months ago.

the nook just blows it away.

 

[Disgustoid]

i have an additional question...in one of the vids i saw on the web they were able to run the kindle app from the market on the nook. did i see that correctly? i'd really like the choice of getting a book from either B&N or Amazon depending on who has the better price. also, if you can do it, is it only available on a certain version of android? i believe i watched a preview vid of honeycomb when i saw this.

I'm currently running both the Android Kindle and Nook apps on my CM7 Nook Color (CM7 is based on Gingerbread, 2.3.2).

The Kindle app works perfectly for reading but the built-in market functionality has never worked properly for me; this means you may need to go to the Amazon website to buy Kindle books and then send them to your device instead of being able to do so from within the app. Aside from this, I haven't had any problems with the Kindle app. It even syncs between my Nook Color and EVO so I can continue reading where I left off (I almost never read books on my phone, but the functionality is cool).

The Nook app does not work on the stock rooted Nook Color, but appears to work fine on CM7 (don't know about Honeycomb). I don't have as much experience with the Nook app aside from looking at the handful of free books included with it. It appears to offer a lot more customization as well as a market that looks like it actually works, from what I've seen so far. Maybe someone else who's used it more can comment here...

 

[stick2e]

Well, my focus into just using this as a table and something simple that I can read been in bed and so on, read a book in NC it will not be the primary function but it may happen (not a lot). I read more technical stuff in the web, forums and little email and so.

CM7 is stable as a table PC? Will the market apps work?

Thanks all !

 

[Biffer]

Well, my focus into just using this as a table and something simple that I can read been in bed and so on, read a book in NC it will not be the primary function but it may happen (not a lot). I read more technical stuff in the web, forums and little email and so.

CM7 is stable as a table PC? Will the market apps work?

Thanks all !

I would answer a qualified NO to both questions. CM7 has only been through a few nightly iterations, so it is definitely still a work in progress. If you check out the XDA threads, you will see the issues people have been having (a few known issues (video playback limitations, no bluetooth, reduced access to internal memory) and some bugs (some apps don't work, some wifi issues)). That being said, I find it to be plenty stable for daily use and it will only get better. Those CM guys are amazing.

With a few tweaks (most should be incorporated in CM7 soon, if not already), almost all apps are available in the market. I have yet to find one that I cannot access - you have to find most apps by searching as opposed to browsing; folks have been having trouble buying apps through NC, but can search and find already purchased ones; downloaded apps do not show up in the "my apps" list. Finding apps is one thing, making them work is another. I have had issues with Pandora/Slacker, Google Maps (apparently 5.0 works, but not 5.1), Ninja Kaka (too slow to play) and YouTube. Large flash videos are not perfect, but flash works and I have no issues watching hulu through the smaller widget. I would think that many of these issues will be worked out eventually. I have no problems with the other 25 or so apps I have downloaded.

If you are not prepared to deal some things that do not work yet, I would stay away from CM7 until a RC is released. But if you can tolerate a few issues (mostly minor in my book), then I would give it a try. Just my 2 cents.

 

[digitalslacker]

+1 to the above

I run CM7 Nightly as my day to day but there are things I need to deal with that would probably bother me if it was considered a stable release.

Yesterday many of my apps weren't in the market but the nightly update I took this morning fixed much of that.

they know about the issues and are doing a great job considering the nightly builds only started on 2/19.

I'm waiting on the video playback fixes so me and my kid can watch youtube videos

 

[techh10]

is cm7 emmc only or can you put it on a sd card?

 

[dquangt]

I'm currently running both the Android Kindle and Nook apps on my CM7 Nook Color (CM7 is based on Gingerbread, 2.3.2).

The Kindle app works perfectly for reading but the built-in market functionality has never worked properly for me; this means you may need to go to the Amazon website to buy Kindle books and then send them to your device instead of being able to do so from within the app. Aside from this, I haven't had any problems with the Kindle app. It even syncs between my Nook Color and EVO so I can continue reading where I left off (I almost never read books on my phone, but the functionality is cool).

The Nook app does not work on the stock rooted Nook Color, but appears to work fine on CM7 (don't know about Honeycomb). I don't have as much experience with the Nook app aside from looking at the handful of free books included with it. It appears to offer a lot more customization as well as a market that looks like it actually works, from what I've seen so far. Maybe someone else who's used it more can comment here...

thanks for the reply. i have no problem with loading the kindle books on at home. honestly, i really don't see a situation that i'm aching so bad to read a book that i need to get it right then and there, lol.

so are you saying that the nook app and b&n bookstore are not usable in any other configuration than a plain stock nook color?? i just want to make sure.

i was at the store and almost picked up the NC but thought i'd try and get one more question answered. my main use of the nook would be to read the occasional kindle/nook e-book, web when i'm out at a coffee shop or the like, and to watch movies. i have lots of downtime because my activities are 45 minutes away from home and to avoid traffic i have to leave early to places which means i'm sitting around alot doing nothing. perfect time to have something like the nook.

anyway, to my question. in regards to movies, how well does the nook handle them and is it as easy as putting the movies on the sd and playing? i'd love to be able to play 720p .mkv files, but i've heard that's a no go and you need to convert those files to something the nook can handle. what about .avi's?? will the nook play those without any conversion?

thanks in advance.

 

[jd10984]

Around 2 weeks ago I officially decided to get a tablet. I did a TON of research on pretty much every tablet out there. At one point I was quite close to getting an Ipad but due to the price I was turned away. Than I really began to look into the nook color, how great it is rooted and I finally bit the bullet tonight and picked one up.

For the price it is a no brainer imo.. It also seems to be rite up there, better than almost all of the expensive $400-$600 tablets which is amazing, plus there is no contract which makes it much more cheaper lol. Anyways I played around with it alot tonight and had quite a bit of fun with it as is (a little surprisingly actually lol) Tomorrow I am planning to root it and expect to love it even more! Overall I am quite happy with the purchase. Imo you should just get it already. With the community support that the nook color has (its insane how GREAT it is), the price beating all of the competition and the overall quality of it I would say it is pretty much a no brainer

 

[jerrykur]

anyway, to my question. in regards to movies, how well does the nook handle them and is it as easy as putting the movies on the sd and playing? i'd love to be able to play 720p .mkv files, but i've heard that's a no go and you need to convert those files to something the nook can handle. what about .avi's?? will the nook play those without any conversion?

thanks in advance.

The nook handles mp4, m4v, mpeg-4 type files. I do not think it will do AVIs.

You can copy the files to your sdcard and open them from the book shelf manager. They seem to render very smoothly.

 

[Disgustoid]

so are you saying that the nook app and b&n bookstore are not usable in any other configuration than a plain stock nook color?? i just want to make sure.

Just to be clear:

Unrooted stock: Original Nook functionality built into the NC works (duh).

Rooted stock: Original Nook functionality built into the NC works but the Android Nook app does NOT work here.

Nookie Froyo: Don't have enough experience with this to say.

CM7: Original Nook functionality built into the NC is completely wiped, overwritten by the CM7 install. Android Nook app works here, although I've read a few comments from people indicating that magazines don't work properly.

anyway, to my question. in regards to movies, how well does the nook handle them and is it as easy as putting the movies on the sd and playing? i'd love to be able to play 720p .mkv files, but i've heard that's a no go and you need to convert those files to something the nook can handle. what about .avi's?? will the nook play those without any conversion?

I absolutely LOATHE having to convert videos to play on different devices. As noted above, RockPlayer works well for playing standard-definition MP4 and AVI files on CM7 (running off the microSD card); WMV files only worked about half the time for me. RockPlayer also works on the rooted stock Nook, but I had significant audio sync issues with almost all the files I tried.

I'm guessing 720p MKV files might not work so well since the Nook might not have the horsepower to decode those files. I'm using my Evo as a reference here--that has significant issues playing 720p files despite the faster CPU.

 

[808dave]

i have an additional question...in one of the vids i saw on the web they were able to run the kindle app from the market on the nook. did i see that correctly? i'd really like the choice of getting a book from either B&N or Amazon depending on who has the better price. also, if you can do it, is it only available on a certain version of android? i believe i watched a preview vid of honeycomb when i saw this.

Kindle app works perfectly on my auto-nootered NC. I got mine for Xmas last year and the Kindle app works so well on it, I'm seriously thinking of selling my Kindle.

My two biggest peeves about my NC:

1. Random reboots when not in use
2. Poor battery life -- I have to plug it in every night.

Anyone know if CM7 will fix the 1st and improve the 2nd?