wanting to buy but have some worries

[jayblazer]

if you look at this board its just problem after problem.. i am wanting to get this for my 7 year old son to play with and do homework and stuff. is it stable enough for a kid to be adle to use? i have done some reserch and i think i would just get a micro sd card and run 2.2 right from it. will i be able to get the market and keyboard and everything? also how often do these go on sale? me and the ex wife are hoping to get it for him for easter. do you think they will go on sale before then? the ex wife thing is another reason i need it to be stable. first off she is a mac person and second if it ends up being a waste of money i for sure will never hear the end of it.. thanks for any advice you can give..

 

[Jude526]

Personally, I don't recommend for a 7 year old. I don't think a child is responsible enough, But this is my opinion

 

[john_v]

I just put the latest nightly of CM7 on mine (2.3) and it seems to be running really smooth. I found the downloads and instructions on another site...it was as easy as installing nookie froyo; took me all of ten minutes to install. Runs a lot better than nookie froyo was running.
But it depends on your 7 year old. I let my kids use my nook, but under supervision. You might be better off getting your kid a first gen ipad, they definitely are coming down in price. Of course in my house, apple products are now taboo!

 

[jayblazer]

Ohh he would be fine as far as not breaking it.. heck he uses my xoom all the time. That's the problem..

 

[john_v]

Ohh he would be fine as far as not breaking it.. heck he uses my xoom all the time. That's the problem..

I hear ya on that...the top two questions in my house are "can I play your tablet" followed by "can I play your phone"
We were at a country Buffet last night and as I was taking my son up to get food I heard a kid yell across the room "dad did I eat enough to play your phone"

 

[jayblazer]

Yeah I have the og droid with a ton of games and the xoom and then his mom has the iPhone and we are both constantly being ask if he can play...

 

[alershka#AC]

I think the Nook as an android tablet is great but probably not for a seven year old. I've tried a bunch of different roms and none is perfect. Each has strengths and weeknesses but I have yet to see one that runs everything. Even with games there are a bunch that just will not run. There are lots of idiosyncracies in the hardware in my experience that I just don't think it would be a good experience for you because he wouldn't be satisfied and you'd be spending a lot of your time doing tech support. My wife is less technicaly savvy then most seven year olds and I wouldn't consider giving her one to use ever day.

Sent from my LogicPD Zoom2 using Tapatalk

 

[legion of doo]

if you look at this board its just problem after problem.. i am wanting to get this for my 7 year old son to play with and do homework and stuff. is it stable enough for a kid to be adle to use? i have done some reserch and i think i would just get a micro sd card and run 2.2 right from it. will i be able to get the market and keyboard and everything? also how often do these go on sale? me and the ex wife are hoping to get it for him for easter. do you think they will go on sale before then? the ex wife thing is another reason i need it to be stable. first off she is a mac person and second if it ends up being a waste of money i for sure will never hear the end of it.. thanks for any advice you can give..

I run Honeycomb off a cheap 4GB Class 4 card. No problems with stability for me! And that's supposed to be less stable than Froyo.

I got Swype to work with it, which I think is better than the regular keyboard. Market should work fine.

The question is how comfortable are you with the command line? How about the ex-wife? You need to be able to do stuff at the command line to get Market working. That's the biggest hurdle right there.

Honestly, a 1st gen iPad isn't a bad deal for a kid's present... of course, Angry Birds is "free" on Android, so maybe that's a small factor.

My Nook Color is more for messing around with the Android SDK & doing some web surfing. The NC a device that gets better as you invest more time into it, while the iPad is more of a "pick up & go" thing if you're giving it away as a gift. I wouldn't trade my NC for an iPad, but that's because it fits my needs way better than the iPad.

If I were to give my kids a tablet, I'd probably have to go with an iPad.

/My kids use my NC, LG Optimus V, and iPod Touch all the time.

 

[tarataqa]

If your 7yr old will take care of it, a nice over-clockable tablet with swappable SD cards would keep them busy. (if you can afford a Xoom, then a $250 toy is no hurdle for you)

autonooter 3.0 is by far the easiest if you want to retain full Barnes&Noble built-in software. But the easiest was what I did last nite, slap a clockworkrecovery SD card you make in the Nook with phiremod v5.1 zip file and flash it over...No command line interfacing required!

Then show your kids Appbrain and they'll spend weeks tweaking/playing it. (maybe read an e-book once in a while too)

 

[jayblazer]

Will I have the market? I'm alright with not having all of it but I need things like angry bird.. I guess I need to look into side loading.. does anyone have a link to an explanation of it?

 

[318sugarhill]

Rooted stock is perfect for a 7 year old imho. Running off an sd card can be painfully slow unless you shell out money for a good quality class 6 or higher. Froyo sd has had lots of force closes issues for me. The adb stuff took a while to to get the market working. Had issues with the computer not recognizing the device, etc. Rooting the stock took less than 10 minutes with easy to follow directions. Yeah i don't have flash, but read about a work around im gonna try and not everything appears on the market, but mostly everything I want works just fine for me. When hc is fully baked i will try that.

So if you go with rooted stock, the only one issue I have is that when apps are downloaded i have to reboot for them to appear in the app tray. For $200 it was worth it.

 

[reverendzj]

What you're asking is precisely what I did. My oldest just turned 8 last month and he's now the primary NC user.

If you read and follow the stickies at the top of the page, you'll have a low cost, stable Android platform to use, which is a fun alternative to the iPad and Xoom. I'm running Honeycomb on mine with Market enabled (on a class 4 SD), and have had zero issues from day 1.

 

[jayblazer]

Alright I'm pretty sold on it but I have a few? Left.. what is side loading? Is this card alright Walmart.com: Wintec Filemate 16GB Micro SDHC Memory Card with SD Adapter: Digital Cameras ? And does anyone know of a place with the nook on sale? Thanks for all your help guys..

 

[acwyau]

Alright I'm pretty sold on it but I have a few? Left.. what is side loading? Is this card alright Walmart.com: Wintec Filemate 16GB Micro SDHC Memory Card with SD Adapter: Digital Cameras ? And does anyone know of a place with the nook on sale? Thanks for all your help guys..

That's a generic class 2 card, it won't be fast enough to run reliably. You will have to spend the money on a class 6 or higher card from one of the name brand manufacturers like Sandisk or Transcend.

 

[cz9h3d]

Rooting my Nook Color to just the stock 2.1 was extremely easy (i.e. AutoNooter - burn an SD card, put it in, in a few minutes you're good to go). The market, mail, etc are all installed as part of AutoNooter. The only issue I've had is the wifi doesn't always wake up when the unit does - or doesn't reconnect automatically - even this little thing would rule it out for my wife.

The Froyo/HoneyComb builds all require you to dig into the minutia of the SDK to put the market/mail on (they don't want Google to sue them I guess by including). I have yet to get this working - more a function of reading a lot of posts, retaining the information, and then working through the SDK details - not a simple task for the non-programmers. I've started this a couple times and gave up after a couple hours - and of course then need to start from scratch the next time.

Personally, for a low-maintenance option for a 7yo (and ex-wife), I would recommend an iPod touch or 1st gen iPad. A rooted Nook Color is more for those who like to tinker with things, love the challenge of getting things to work, etc. My 12yo loves his iPod touch - harder to break too when they drop it.

 

[thecarline]

There are a couple of ways to go with this:
1. Rooted Stock (Android 2.1) is extremely stable and insanely easy to do. I rooted two of Nook Colors in the family for android tablets. Its cheap and its honestly a great experience for light internet, angry birds, and note taking via Note Everything. Honestly; I'm more than happy with my Nook Color; I use it for work and business, its my daily device and I've even talked to other people/businesses about using the device.
2. Rooted Android to Froyo (Android 2.2) is a little more tricky but its not impossible. There are several great guides online here and at other sites to do this. If you're doing an android tablet for a child; one of the best features about having Froyo is the ability to do Tumble Books. (If you dont know, tumblebooks are flash based books for children to read and they are semi-interactive. Some libraries even have a link on their site so you can get the books for free online).
3. Running anything off an SD card is always another option if you want to have multiple methods. Don't run it off a card however if you are just worried about bricking your nook. It's practically impossible to brick because of the nook running off an SD card first on loading.
4. From what I know; sideloading is installing an android app through downloading or selecting it on an SD card instead of through an app market like the Android Market or the Amazon market. I don't know if sending the app through ADB (usb connection through from your computer to the nook) would constitute side-loading tho.
5. Sure it's rant-bait; but I just don't care for Apple products. I had an Ipod, I've used the iPad and the iPod Touch and the iPhone; they are slick devices but I never felt at home using it or learning about it. Apple products to me are the kind of houses you see in magazines, really pretty and trendy but you realize that you wouldn't want to live in the house because it lacks your own personality or flair. Android lets you customize or add your own flair from widgets to live wallpapers etc.