- Is there a preferred way to run the Nook Color with a custom ROM?
You can run the custom builds either from an SD card or internal memory. If you have a fast SD card, then it seems from people who run one of the custom ROMs things will work well booting from the SD. However, the general consensus is that all of the custom builds run better/faster from the internal memory.
So far I see three options:
- CyanogenMod 7
- Nookie Froyo
- DeepBlue's Gingerbread
CM7 is a Gingerbread (Android 2.3) build, and Froyo is Android 2.2. Deeper-Blue's build is actually Honeycomb (Android 3.0). All three are still considered to be in development and have several issues. Experiences vary widely - some people state they have stability, speed, and good compatibility while others get stuck in boot loops on the first try. The reported problems, ongoing issues, and workarounds are lengthly and occupy hundreds of posts in the XDA forums. As it seems that everyone's experience is slightly different...the only way to tell what is going to happen is to try one out for yourself. As you can boot from an SD card without affecting your internal memory, probably the best thing to do is give the custom builds a test drive from and SD card, realizing that once installed to the internal memory things will be at least a little faster and smoother.
I want something "somewhat" stable but don't mind the occasional reboots or crashes. Of course I would LOVE to move to Gingerbread, but I heard we need to overclock the NC to do so and have it be used well.
The CM7 build is probably going to take the lead in stabillity and usability. The CM7 team has a great reputation for solid builds with good support. They are still in early versions, but making progress. This build is based on Gingerbread. Once they get some of the kinks worked out, I will likely move to their daily builds.
You do not need to overclock to get CM7 Gingerbread working...but many people choose to do so.
Also, do I need to buy any special type of MicroSD card for this thing to get going? I have an old 8GB MicroSD chip from my Evo that came out when I replaced it with a 32GB chip.
This is also a topic of debate. Different brands of SD cards will have different speeds...even if they are listed as the same class. Some people have trouble getting different builds to work on certain brands/sizes/classes of SD cards, but others don't. From what I can tell, you need at least a class 4 Sandisk card to get things working at a reasonable speed. I just say Sandisk because for cards with the same class, from what I have seen the Sandisk cards run faster than most. Some builds will not currently let you take advantage of lots of left over space on the card, so what size you should get depends on what you are trying to run and how far along the development is. I refer you to the hundreds of posts on XDA for details.
Is it worth it? I can't see paying $500 or so bucks for a Tab. All I need is WiFi on a Tablet with my rooted Evo and WiFi tether. If I start to use this thing on an insanely large basis I can also get a more expensive (read faster) tablet in the future.
I certainly think it is...the Nook Color does everything that I would want out of a tablet for a great price. It really depends on what you want out of your tablet....if you want video chat and live maps with GPS direction...then obviously this is not for you. I already use mine on and 'insanely large basis', and have no plans to upgrade. No need to.
As a side note, I have tried the other currently available builds (from SD card), and find the rooted stock Eclair (Android 2.1) to be the most stable and reliable OS thus far. You can look around the forums here for some of the debate around this issue, but in my opinion the other builds are not yet far enough long to replace the stock OS. As I mentioned above, I will likely eventually move to the CM7 Gingerbread once they get some of the problems worked out, but in my opinion it is not yet ready for prime time.
Cheers
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