Nook Color Rooted — Will B&N Embrace the Tablet? 181
itwbennett writes "It can browse the web, edit Office docs, run apps. Is it a low-cost, low-function e-reader? Nope, it's a Nook. And now that XDA has rooted it, how Barnes & Noble responds will determine whether the Nook has a tablet future, says blogger Ryan Faas. 'If the device can be turned into a capable Android tablet (which technically it already is) easily, the $250 price tag certainly beats out some of the competition.'"
Re:Reaction (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind you, loss leaders (which subsidised hardware for expensive consumables are) are a distortion of a free market. Anything which undermines it is wholesome and good.
(Used to buy for a small retailer. Often the shelf price at large retailers was less than the wholesale price from the manufacturer/distributor. But they had "Three per customer" type limits, which turns out to be illegal under my State's consumer laws (written specifically to punish loss-leaders, apparently.) Used to make for fun public arguments.)
Re:Reaction (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, work in retail myself, in the past have been asked by a boss to go to a competitor and buy all their stock of one item, because they were selling it cheaper than our wholesaler.
And yes, we have similar laws in my state too :)
Could be very, very good for BN (Score:2, Interesting)
As soon as I saw this thing was rooted, I ran out and bought one - partially because it is a really nice little Android tablet, but mostly because it's a damn nice reader. The first app I put on it was the Kindle app. It's arguably the best Kindle reader out there.
I also bought some Nook books, which I had not done before.
I would not have either purchased a Nook (I expect there will be better/cheaper Android tabs very shortly - look at all the dual core tegra tablets on the way...) or purchased any Nook Books, except it now runs my Kindle library.
The Nook absolutely rocks, BTW. Wonderful form factor, lots of space, pretty quick, decent price. Could maybe use a few more buttons (menu and back are missing) but that can be worked around. It also needs Froyo, but other than that, awesome device.
Would love to see iSuppli pricing for this thing; since it's basically a repackaged Beagle Board, I bet they are doing OK on each unit. Got to be much cheaper to build than an iPad and iSuppli priced that at $229 back in February - and that had a lot more flash on board. $150?