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Android

Nook Color Is Now a $250 Honeycomb Tablet 105

Posted by timothy from the sorry-son-no-warranty-past-this-point dept.
Barnes & Noble markets the Nook Color as an e-reader with tablet functionality handily built in, but that designation undersells it a bit — it's just as easy to see it as an Android tablet with a 7" multitouch display and a Cortex A8 processor that happens to have strong book-reading features. Compared to the current big name in 7" Android tablets, Samsung's Galaxy Tab, it's quite underspec'd (no camera or GPS receiver, Wi-Fi but no 3G), but it also costs only $250. A few days ago, Android hackers managed to put Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) onto the Color, though in a mostly crippled state. Now Liliputing points out that they've enabled hardware acceleration, too. Pretty neat that one of the cheapest capacitive-screen tablets you can get handles an operating system that a few weeks back was expected to require heavier iron. As comments at Engadget point out, it's not the very smoothest performance, but this is an early build by enthusiasts, and doesn't look too shabby. The developer's announcement of the port points out that this is a work in progress: "What is not working... pretty much everything else, no accelerometer, no wlan, no sound. Haven't started working on those things yet."
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Nook Color Is Now a $250 Honeycomb Tablet More

Nook Color Is Now a $250 Honeycomb Tablet

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  • So... (Score:3)

    by orphiuchus ( 1146483 ) on Sunday January 30, 2011 @12:26PM (#35049166)

    They found a very complex way to break a Nook Color?

    • I've been looking for a smaller tablet for home automation. This might be perfect if they get wlan working. The Galaxy Tab

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday January 30, 2011 @12:43PM (#35049272) Homepage Journal

      Hacking the ebook readers may be the only way to make them really useful.

      Scientific American had an article about the the E-Readers; The Trouble with E-Readers, by David Pogue [scientificamerican.com], where they essentially says that they are a hype.

      However I see a problem with the ebook, and that is that if you break your reader or run out of battery (either will happen eventually) then the books you have will be unreadable. Breaking a paper book doesn't make it unreadable, and at worst you have to re-glue the pages but usually a piece of tape is sufficient.

      And if you buy a paper book then your kids can read it too, but will the ebook reader and the books it contains survive that long?

      • ah, I should note as an e-reader convert: you don't have to replace your paper books. I supplement my library with the kindle, which is easier to take on trips than three paperbacks. It's also more comfortable to read on and has the ability for automatically delivered periodicals and blogs..
        but if you don't throw out your paper library, you don't have to worry about electronic failure so much (:
        (i also keep backups of all my ebooks)

      • I disagree with the conclusion of that article. I picked up an iLiad a few years ago, and it's seen a lot of use. It's significantly better for reading than a laptop screen, especially in sunlight, and is more portable than paper books. I quite often use it when I'm travelling, as I can fill it up with research papers and books from Project Gutenberg to read. It's not a substitute for paper books, but it's definitely a useful device.

        That said, the Nook Color is an entirely different class of device.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Belial6 ( 794905 )
          Actually, a QR code printed in the back of the book would be a pretty darn cool way to handle it. Yes, you would get sites online that distribute the QR codes, but you already get that with the books themselves, so nothing would be lost on that front.

      • I hope I'm following you correctly and not missing some piece of info, but how does running out of battery render an ebook unreadable? I sold a Sony reader and got a new model, and all the books and newspapers I purchased in the past were waiting in the Sony store app, ready for download. As for reading a book 200 years from now? What 200 year old books do you know that are anywhere but a museum, behind a safety glass, etc. I don't know about anyone else, but for most books, once you read them, you rare

        • I have only read one book that was physically over 100 years old (Eene aanmerkelijke luchtreis, 1813 W.Bilderdijk), but I have read many that were printed 50 or more years ago. Most of them originally owned by my parents or grandparents. Jules Verne, Old Shatterhand, Sherlock Holmes, Asimov's Foundation is from 1951. Hell, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is already 43 years old.

          I can name many more, but most of them are from Dutch writers that would probably not mean anything to you. The oldest book I currently own

      • I have a Kindle 3. And love it. I have bought few books, but use it extensively to read other files I have got (ebooks, PDFs, simple text files, ... - And yes, I'll recognize it's not 100% legally acquired material) And no, I don't and won't see it as my long-term library. From the books I have read, I have already bought two - One to keep as a hard-copy in my bookshelf, one to give away as a present. Oh, and of course, I have also downloaded electronic versions of books I have sitting on my bookshelf for y

        • I have a Kindle 3. And love it. I have bought few books, but use it extensively to read other files I have got (ebooks, PDFs, simple text files, ...

          How good is the PDF experience on the Kindle3? I have an iPad, and it's decent (color), but it's a bit heavy for reading long hours at night. My main usage of ebooks are to read my tech manuals which are all PDFs.

          • Kindle and PDFs (Score:4, Informative)

            by gwolf ( 26339 ) <gwolf AT gwolf DOT org> on Sunday January 30, 2011 @06:33PM (#35051284) Homepage

            The experience is... Ok. Although not stellar, by far - PDFs are usually produced to be displayed/printed on a letter/A4 format, that is, about 3x the size of the screen. The Kindle tries to get as close as possible to the PDF by cropping the displayed portion. Sadly, it does not recognize elements that make the display be too reduced (i.e. the header/footer, repeated at every page with minimal modifications)... But anyway, reading it at page level zoom is usually very uncomfortable (and I have very good sight), if at all possible.

            Zooming into the text is useless, as the zoom cuts the page in half horizontally - so if you are not reading material with columns (i.e. a magazine), it's basically useless.

            What I do, and have read several books with, is to rotate the screen and hold it in landscape. The cropping is then adjusted for maximum effective horizontal space. It is still not as comfortable as reading a text, native format - but it is much better, and more than enough for reading a book.

            Finally, if your PDF is mostly text, you can mail it to [your-address]@free.kindle.com, with "convert" as the subject. It usually does the right thing.

      • Um.. what are you talking about? If you break your eReader, when you buy another one, you associate it to your account and re-download everything. At least, that's how it works with Nook and Kindle. What happens if your basement gets flooded and all your books in storage are ruined by mold?

        And in the meantime, you can associate other devices to your account (like the iPad that won't work with Sony's device...) and view your books on those (again, with Nook and Kindle, that is.) Barnes and Noble will even

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          If you can find one where you are.

          They aren't available in many countries.

          • Oh yeah, I can't tell you how many times I find myself in assorted foreign countries. That's definitely a problem most people will have in their daily lives.

            eBooks aren't a religion. If you find yourself with a broken reader in a country with no compatible eBook readers and a need to read.. then find a local solution. Maybe buy a regular book.

            • This was a jerk comment, in which you revel in being a small-worlder. Most people would be a little ashamed their egocentric view had caused them to overlook the rest of the whole planet.

        • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 30, 2011 @09:35PM (#35052508)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Scientific American had an article about the the E-Readers; The Trouble with E-Readers, by David Pogue , where they essentially says that they are a hype.

        That's not what it says. It says that Amazon proclaiming that e-books won is way too early, but it also says that we'll likely get there eventually.

        However I see a problem with the ebook, and that is that if you break your reader or run out of battery (either will happen eventually) then the books you have will be unreadable

        Why would it? I mean, breaking your laptop or having it run out of battery doesn't make the files on it unreadable.

        Also, there's this "backup" thing.

      • However I see a problem with the ebook, and that is that if you break your reader or run out of battery (either will happen eventually) then the books you have will be unreadable. Breaking a paper book doesn't make it unreadable, and at worst you have to re-glue the pages but usually a piece of tape is sufficient.

        I find e-readers really useful for stuff like magazines that I would recycle in a week or a month, or for my wife's trashy romance novels that only merit one reading (by her calculation -- zero by mine). These things aren't so much heirlooms to me as "clutter."

        I'd like to see my Mom adopt this technology for these reasons. Especially as I'll be responsible for cleaning out her basement after she's gone.

        But they won't replace the "coffee table book".

      • Scientific American had an article about the the E-Readers; The Trouble with E-Readers, by David Pogue [scientificamerican.com], where they essentially says that they are a hype.

        I think Pogue is full of it.

        I was in that camp - I thought ereaders were pointless, and holding a physical book was the only way I'd ever want to read. But, having to fill six post-shoulder-surgery weeks in the dead of winter (and being effectively one-armed for the duration), I bought a Kindle - figuring I'd sell it after I got my arm back. But you know what? For reading novels, I really like the thing - the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. For example: I thought I'd hate the buttons... but, when you're ho

        • And I'll probably miss having a wall full of books... but that's just the part of me that doesn't like change.

          I've got a whole roomful of books, as well as an ereader. They're not mutually exclusive.

      • However I see a problem with the ebook, and that is that if you break your reader or run out of battery (either will happen eventually) then the books you have will be unreadable. Breaking a paper book doesn't make it unreadable, and at worst you have to re-glue the pages but usually a piece of tape is sufficient.

        The same thing can be said for anything which uses an internal batteries...such as an IPod. They do have external power packs available you should be able to engineer to run or recharge whatever device on the go from a set of off-the-shelf batteries or a lithium-ion pack. It's not as convenient or looks as cool. It works...I'm happy.

        I want to be cool...I'll drive a 77 Trans-AM around wearing a wig...pretending to be Burt Reynolds.

      • I spent several hours this last weekend trying to get Android running on my old WinMo phone. An HTC Titan, it sports dual 400 Mhz PPC CPUs and 64 MB of RAM. WinMo 6.1 is so broken, Android is its only hope! Because Android, with its Linux foundations, is the new "make it work" platform! it's lightweight, powerful, and provides a standard, hardware-independent platform that provides positive network effects! (such as the Android marketplace)

        I didn't buy a Nook, I downloaded the Nook app for my Android phone.

        • The reasons (which don't really apply to the nook color, since it's just a TFT tablet) are:

          1) Being able to read in direct sunshine, or, indeed any light at all
          2) Having a month of battery life (very important if you're going trekking for a week!)
          3) Having a larger screen than a phone (a screen the same size as a paperback book) without weighing any more

          Whether or not that matters to you depends on what you do. But all tend to be important if you're reading a lot of books.

        • Who wants to carry an ebook reader when you could be carrying so much more without any additional weight?

          The difference between reading a book on an android phone screen and a proper ebook reader is as great as between taking a video on the 1.3Mbps built in camera and a dedicated HD camcorder.

        • > 2) Newspaper
          > 3) A whole library of books. (!)
          >
          > 5) Web Browser
          > 6) Email,
          > 9) Hotline to my friends and family (Facebook!)
          >
          > Should I go on?

          Please don,t because you could go on forever if you listed every single thing you can do with a web browser, like buy things, find a parking spot, change my hotel reservation, read slashdot, read engadget, etc, etc. That's great. You have a web browser on a tiny screen and a slow(ish) network that costs a decent amount of money per month. I

      • I call bullshit on that article's author (or he is seriously misinformed). E-Readers are not perfect but they are definitely a working substitute for paperbacks.
        E-Readers mostly fail at works with lots of illustrations (if you're using a Nook Color to read ebooks you're doing it wrong) or things like textbooks. Also many ebooks have sub-par formatting compared to their tree brethren.

        They’re much more fragile than books. They run out of power, leaving you with nothing to read.

        Any e-ink display device is not "much more fragile" than your typical paperback book unless you like to lug books around const

      • Hmmm ... the Sci Am article seems to be written by someone who doesn't get ebooks. I don't think you get them, either. The writer does have a slight point about DRM encryption, but neglects to mention that Amazon's DRM rubbish is now dead easy to strip out of books, leaving you with an open-format electronic version you can backup and format-shift at will.

        I don't pirate ebooks and I'm very happy to pay for ebooks. But I always strip out the DRM, and wouldn't buy from a supplier whose DRM routines hadn't

      • Unfortunately the guy with the troublesome e-books doesn't know a lot about them.

        This fragility of the ebook reader that some go on about - fortunately books are indestructible, yes? They can be destroyed as easily as an e-book

        I have a Literati - it's color, it can read pdf's and textfiles as well as whatever the format they send ebooks in. I can read in total darkenss and not bother the family. And the thing only cost 75 dollars. Even if Kobe goes out of business, it's still useful. I've used it to pu

  • A few days ago, Android hackers managed to put Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) onto the Color, though in a mostly crippled state.

    And it will remain in a crippled state. The minimum spec for Android Honeycomb is a dualcore Tegra 2 (A9) chip. The Nook has a single core A8 chip.

    Which makes the title:

    Nook Color Is Now a $250 Honeycomb Tablet

    And since it makes no sense for the Nook to jump to a more expensive dual-core processor, it means we now have four mobile OS variations from Google:

    1) Chrome OS
    2) Android 2.x for Phones
    3) Android 2.x for Tablets
    4) Android 3.x Honeycomb

    Then add HTC, Motorola, Samsung and DELL slapping incompatible UI and extensions on top of each of those of

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Threni ( 635302 )

      > The minimum spec for Android Honeycomb is a dualcore Tegra 2 (A9) chip.

      You'll struggle to find a citation for that. Don't bother with the rumours sites please - something from Google would be great.

    • And it will remain in a crippled state. The minimum spec for Android Honeycomb is a dualcore Tegra 2 (A9) chip. The Nook has a single core A8 chip.

      http://twitter.com/#!/morrildl/status/22845294886518785 [twitter.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      First APL fans say the reason why they bought their product of existing phones is because it's optimized for a small touch screen. Now Google's optimizing for tablets, and now it's a problem? Go back to your gimped, crappy tablet they're rumoured to be breaking their once-a-year product launch because they know they gimped their own product for suckers like you to run and gush over it (no camera when 1 month later FT came in? 256MB when their phone has 512MB when the tablet NEEDS more memory for higher

  • great low-cost tablet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Sunday January 30, 2011 @12:38PM (#35049248) Homepage Journal

    I have no interest in paying separate 3G fees or contracts, and I already have an Android phone. So I thought the NOOKcolor would be a great way of playing some games and reading some free e-books on long airplane flights.

    I bought one, and within an hour had it rooted, replaced the sucky built-in "Home" activity with LauncherPro [appbrain.com], replaced the sucky built-in soft keyboard with Smart Keyboard Pro [appbrain.com], and re-mapped the hardware volume buttons into the missing hardware MENU and BACK buttons. (You can do the last part with a "Soft Keys" service, but I prefer the hardware keys.) It plays Angry Birds and even X Plane 9 Mobile very well. The orientation sensor seems to be a bit weaker, tipping acts more like a 20-sided die vs a sphere.

    In fact, since I have very little interest in paying the same price for electronic books that cannot be copied, shared, or transferred like real books, I have been returning to the classics - authors that have enriched the public domain after their years of exclusivity. I find the free FBReader [appbrain.com] to have a better interface than the built-in Barnes and Noble book reading interface.

    Many other games have not yet fixed their assumptions about maximum screen pixel dimensions, so they have hit-testing or background art scaling problems. Those will get fixed over time. Some apps or games like Alchemy Classic [appbrain.com] work better with more real estate, and some apps or games like my own Qwiz - Hiragana [appbrain.com] make use of the bigger screen with larger print or graphic elements.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) *

      Actually, you will pay more for an ebook over the paper back.

      I was on a trip and happened to run through my spare reading material. I was not in a position to retrieve the next book in a series and as a last resort hopped on kindle. The price for paper back was around 5 or 6 dollars, but if I had been picky I could find it used for less. Now, the kindle edition was around 9 dollars for the exact same thing, but in digital format.

      Again, being away from home I had only a few easy options and I settled on the

      • Re:great low-cost tablet (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, 2011 @01:38PM (#35049490)

        Another problem I'm finding with ebooks (purchased through Amazon) is that in several cases they're nothing but bad OCR jobs. It pisses me off no end to pay 9 bucks for an ebook only to find words hyphenated in the middle of a line, number '1' instead of 'I', and even strange special characters being substituted for letters. When publishers decide to actually put in some effort to get their product at least as correct as their print versions, then I might see the point of paying for them. I've got plenty of Project Gutenberg ebooks and even pirated ebooks from torrents that were more professionally and conscientiously produced. Simply having an intern run the book through a scanner (as has been obvious in some books) and not even bothering to correct the text does not justify charging a damn thing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Depends on the ebook.

        As an iPhone developer my boss asked me to get into android development(oh man I don't believe in coincidences). But I needed to get up to speed quickly, and for me that's a good book. So I found the book at my local B&N for $50. It's been a long time since I shopped for a physical technical book like this, but I'm reminded that these are highly focused books who cater to a select few. But as a frugal man I decide to look for it cheaper. I found out that since the latest Android OS

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by steveha ( 103154 )

        Quote: Actually, you will pay more for an ebook over the paper back.

        Well, it depends. If you are buying from the Kindle store, I guess you are right.

        If you are buying from Baen, you can spend $15 and get six to eight books.

        If you are pulling from the Baen Free Library or from the (legal!) Fifth Imperium archive of Baen books, you are getting books for free.

        If you are pulling public domain books from feedbooks.com or direct from Project Gutenberg, you are getting books for free.

        I have spent hundreds of doll

  • I have an android phone also. Putting honeycomb on the nook might be entertaining. My observation of the nook color so far is that it is a little slow. So it is not surprising that honeycomb is a little laggy. What would be truly amazing is if they (the individuals porting honeycomb to nook) actually fixed the performance via code and handed it back to B&N. That would be too funny. Could be a plus for B&N and take them beyond just e-books. B&N do have a few apps besides the e-book reader

    • Nook is kinda slow because it runs Android 2.1 out of the box - that doesn't have Dalvik JIT, among other things.

      • Good to know that its 2.1. All it says on system information is version 1.0. But that I am assuming is referring to the e-book application. I haven't had a chance to tear it apart yet to see "what makes it tick" yet. Hopefully I will find time soon. Thanks again for the 2.1 and missing JIT info, it gives me a place to start from.

        • Yeah, 1.0 is the Nook software/firmware.

          I haven't had a chance to tear it apart yet to see "what makes it tick" yet. Hopefully I will find time soon.

          It's not all that hard, actually. The unstable thing TFA talks about is Honeycomb, but you can also turn Nook into a tablet running 2.1 - with all bells and whistles working, since the OS remains the same, you just unlock its features. Even get the Market on it if you want. Here [nookdevs.com] is all you need to know

  • The color Nook is none too speedy at all... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Crash ( 237179 ) on Sunday January 30, 2011 @12:51PM (#35049320)

    I've played extensively with a Nook Color.... and dispite a luscious color screen, it's none too speedy even doing what it's supposed to be doing, being a bookreader. Pages stutter as they cross the page; the update rate is not only well below 10 Hz but it's also irregular.

    I can only fear what it might be like running something "that should have more CPU available".

    That said, for $250, who cares? :)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      My nook color is a lot smoother now that I overclocked it up to 1 Ghz from 800 mhz. Also, running a different launcher program makes way more difference than I expected. If you remove the various phone services that are built into android, it also helps a bit.

    • There is no page turn animation on the Nook Color, and thus nothing that 'stutters' when 'crossing the page [sic].'

      I declare you full of crap.

      • Perhaps there is "tearing" as the page updates.

        I won't know, because I won't buy a Nook Color. I don't think Barnes and Noble can afford to compete with both the iPad AND the Kindle, and I'm afraid that by trying to compete with the former, they're going to start ignoring the latter (like, right now, for instance, they seem to have missed the new, smaller lighter kindle...)

  • Community hardware ROMs just aren't worth it (Score:3)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Sunday January 30, 2011 @02:16PM (#35049664)
    It's been my universal experience that community hardware ROMs tend to suck, and worse, the community usually isn't honest and upfront about all the problems; it's only after you install, find a slew of problems, and start googling that you find all the email and forum threads with dozens of "me too"s and no response from developers. I installed Cyanogen 6.1.1 on my Android phone, and it turns out there are a slew of issues that were reported in the 6.1 release candidates that "cyanogen" and his buddies just never could be pissed to fix before final release OR the .1.1 update that followed. It doesn't support hidden SSIDs, when the stock ROM does just fine. It also no longer supports sleeping with WiFi; if the phone goes into sleep mode, you have to cycle WiFi on and off again. Worse, wifi goes dead in a way that doesn't trigger the normal switchover to cellular data, which REALLY sucks if you're using something like Google Voice for texts and phone calls - you simply will not get the calls, missed call notification, or text messages. The sensitivity of the touch screen changed such that you now have to hold the phone to use the screen (ie, you can't tap something on the screen while it sits on your desk). All these issues have been reported in the forums and had bug reports filed, and they're sitting, untouched. Another example: the WRT-610N. Supported by one of the alternative ROMs for access points. Trouble is: performance sucked compared to the stock drivers, it would hang about every 18-24 hours, and so on. Lots of impressive features, but utter Fail when it came to basic reliability.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't have that problem at all on my Epic, but I am using community roms that aren't cyanogen. Cyanogen is a special beast because it is completely AOSP versus most ROMs using a blend of the built-in proprietary components and open source replacements to fix the rough edges. I love my custom ROM, it's really improved my Android phone experience versus the really crap default Sprint ROM with all of their bloatware.

      • Cyanogen is a special beast because it is completely AOSP

        Not really. If you look at some of the contributions made to Cyanogenmod, you'll see that it's far from pure AOSP. The only "proprietary" components are the binary blobs provided by the phone vendors for radio operation and such, and of course the Google Experience Apps (which you can easily download as a separate package and aren't part of the operating system in any event.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think these custom ROMs were not meant for you, but for a more technical audience.

    • It's been my universal experience that community hardware ROMs tend to suck, and worse, the community usually isn't honest and upfront about all the problems

      You can't make such a sweeping claim. You just can't, with even a semblance of reasonableness. The reality is that community ROMs, just like commercial firmware, are entirely dependent upon the caliber of the people managing and developing them. Some are incredible, some suck, and most are in between. For example, my home network uses a WRT-54G wireless router running the Tomato firmware package ... blows the stock firmware completely out of the wanter. Linksys' stuff would die during sustained heavy transf

      • Frankly, I've used the stock firmware on a number of Android devices (started with a G1, currently have an HTC Vision, T-Mobile's G2) and I wouldn't go back to the carrier-provided OS if you paid me

        I've got a G2 as well. I don't suppose you realized that all the bugs I'm talking about apply to your device?

        Or that the G2 has the most stock, unmolested Android installation of any phone/carrier save maybe the Nexus S?

    • I installed Cyanogen 6.1.1 on my Android phone, and it turns out there are a slew of issues that were reported in the 6.1 release candidates that "cyanogen" and his buddies just never could be pissed to fix before final release OR the .1.1 update that followed. It doesn't support hidden SSIDs, when the stock ROM does just fine.

      Um .... no ... I'm using CM 6.1.1 on my home network, which has a hidden SSID. No issues at all.

      It also no longer supports sleeping with WiFi; if the phone goes into sleep mode, you have to cycle WiFi on and off again.

      Nope again. Nope on all your other issues, too.

      Dunno what phone you're using, and maybe these issues are specific for your phone (in which case, it's really the kernel maintainer's fault, not the CM core team) ... but your experiences don't match mine, or any other opinions about CM I've read. Not saying you're not experiencing these problems -- obviously you are! But don't extrapolate from that to assume tha

    • I find that with all software though, not just roms and not just android. But for a pertinent example the guy who ported UAE to android did a great job getting it running but stopped when it suited his needs. You can control the mouse pointer with the trackball (if your android HW device happens to have one) but you can't place the pointer using the touch screen, that part is fubar. And like 99% of of ports that get to the "it works for me stage" he's abandoned it and won't respond to messages asking for th

  • Another Contender... (Score:3)

    by farrellj ( 563 ) * on Monday January 31, 2011 @12:49AM (#35053530) Homepage Journal

    The Pandigital "Novel" is a nice little Android tablet that is marketed as an ebook reader. It's only $160 (cdn), at Futureshop & Best Buy (Canada). It's also on sale in the US, but with a more crippled version of Android.

    • I just returned one to Costco ($160CDN). It was just way too slow to use as a tablet. It did work pretty well as an ebook reader but had a few bugs (mostly remembering where you left off a book when you shut it off). It was a nice email reader and picture frame.

      It was pretty slow as a web browser, and couldn't play video without stuttering.

      I decided it was a nice novelty, but that I'd be better off putting the money toward a nicer tablet.

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