Nook Color is almost enough to make you forget Kindle

Shortly afterwards that piece ran, Barnes & Noble released the Nook Color. And previously this week, Google got into the commercial e-bookstore business.

The Nook has always been based on the Android OS

The Nook has always been based on the Android OS, however only deeply behind the scenes. The Nook is on purpose and exuberantly an Android device from the moment you switch it on and you're required to slide a lock button across the screen to wake it up.

Indeed, this fall has seen the release of two 7-inch multitouch-capable Android tablets. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is nice enough, now vastly overpriced at $599. The Nook Color focuses all of its energy on being a book reader, a web browser, and a media consumption device; it never presents itself as anything else and you truly can't install any other Android apps on it. Just the same, at just $249, it's the far more successful tablet of the two. It's way better at doing its single limited function than the Tab is at doing everything else.

Barnes & Noble has done an exceptional job in articulating Android as a book reader. By and large you'll never even recognize that Android is involved at all: from the ankles on upward, the Nook is a completely custom experience. As before long as you wake it up, you're presented with a home screen that Barnes & Noble calls the Nook's "virtual coffee table." A single, iPad-like clicky-button in accordance with the screen always takes you back Home. A "Keep Reading" menu in the upper corner always holds a list of things you've recently read or places you've recently visited; a dedicated button in the in contrast corner will zap you straight back to whatever page you were reading the last time you switched your Nook Color off.

The final central element to the Nook Color experience is the virtual Quick Nav button at the bottom of the touchscreen. All of the key functions of the Nook are in a popup toolbox: access to your Library; the online Nook Store; a device- an internet-wide Search button; Extras; a hotkey for the Nook's built-in web browser; and device settings.

If the Nook were being sold as a straight-up Android tablet computer, I'd fault it for its at times pokey responsiveness. The lag between a tap of the screen and a response from the device is noticeable, particularly when using the popup keyboard to type in a search term or a note. It'd be an annoyance if the Nook were a "getting things done" computer now it's acceptable in a book reader.

The Nook undoubtedly has enough enhanced reading features to remind you why you made the switch from analog bookreading research. On my iPad, I've become quite addicted to highlighting interesting bits of information or particularly nifty turns of phrase. Highlighting text, and adding notes, is such as easy on the Nook Color. Tap on any word and hold to bring up a tool panel that lets you do all of that, plus look up the selection in a dictionary or the Wikipedia.

WiFi network

And if you're connected to a WiFi network, a "Share" button in this group lets you post to Twitter, Facebook, and directly to the contacts in your Google address book. Among the various kinds of posts you can make from the Nook is a semi-"nyahh-nyahh" message to the other members of your book club, marking specifically how far you've made it through this month's book.

The basic MO of the Nook Store is familiar. You can download samples of just about anything for free, and any purchases you make on the desktop are automatically downloaded to your Nook Color every time you refresh its contents. You can read any of your Nook books on an iPad or iPhone, any Android device, or a PC or Mac, via free software.

The Nook has been an e-Pub-based creature since its debut last year. Nevertheless the Google e-book Store - open for just a few days but - really elevates this feature. One of the enduring complaints about commercial e-book stores like Amazon's and Apple's has been that your purchases are locked into one specific brand of reader. There've been independent e-bookstores that use Adobe DRM and which have maintained an explicit "We don't care what you do with this file afterwards we process your credit card" policy, yet there's never been one with the scale and the permanence of Google's operation.

What frustrated Android

It's precisely what frustrated Android and iPad fanciers have been looking for. The first group want something bigger and more ambitious than a phone, nevertheless they aren't so nuts that they'd spend $600 on a Samsung Galaxy Tab. The second group would buy an iPad in a heartbeat, if only it were smaller and less expensive. The Nook Color might be an OK substitute for some of these people.

Before things get out of hand, let me be crystal-clear: the Nook Color isn't an iPad. It isn't a Galaxy Tab, or even what most people expect when they hear the phrase "an Android tablet." Nevertheless it's $250 and it has a bunch of features that might make it "close enough" for many potential consumers of an iPad or a Galaxy Tab:

The browser is WebKit based

The browser is WebKit based ... just like every browser that comes with every Android, iPhone, and iPad. The only big limitation is its lack of plugins. Now Google Apps seem to work fine, even though apps like GMail and Reader open in their mobile incarnations.

These players work then, mostly. The music player is fairly slick. Now I evidently sent the Nook into a panic with the video files I tested. I couldn't even get a short, low-bandwidth file to play. Presumably one can find the correct specs and bitrates for encoding Nook-studly video.

Nonetheless, implicit in the Nook's collection of built-in apps is the statement that Barnes & Noble believes that media and games are part of the reading experience. What else might they approve? There's a lot of potential here; I remind you that pursuant to this agreement all of Barnes & Noble's Nook software there beats the body and the brain of an excellent Android tablet computer. Its technical limitations are few. It has a huge color touchscreen, a snappy processor, and a tilt sensor. This could become one hell of a nice gaming system ... and by "games" I mean "3D driving/racing sims," not "American Presidents Word Search."

Matter of fact realized

Let's hope some of that potential is as a matter of fact realized. There's good reason to be skeptical: plenty of nontraditional computing devices come with a developer kit and the opportunity of third-party apps. Practically none of them have ever attracted a real developer community, now. A tour of the Kindle Active Content available on Amazon turns up a short list of boring word games.

4) If you're willing to be very naughty, tear your hair out for a few hours, and void your warranty otherwise ... you can turn the Nook Color into a for-real Android tablet computer.

The generic term for cracking an Android device so that the user can make the device run software that the manufacturer doesn't approve of is "rooting." Then, the Android developer community successfully rooted the Nook Color within a couple of weeks of its release.

Look on YouTube and you'll find user videos of the Nook Color running standard Android games and apps. It looks to all the world like any other Android device.

The Nook Color is

I can't end this bit without stressing that the Nook Color is by no means whatsoever being sold as an Android tablet, and that a rooted Nook Color is a completely impractical in that role. As well, there's no promise that your hacked Nook will continue to function at all, or that you won't completely bork your device if you try this and fail.

So why even talk about it, at the time? I cite this experience only as an illustration of just how muscular the Nook Color is. I'm impressed by this device. I had to ask Barnes & Noble point blank: why not just sell this as a full-blown Android tablet with dedicated hard button that switches it to an awesome custom Nook reader mode?

The Nook Color were an $249 Android tablet

If the Nook Color were an $249 Android tablet, I'd be recommending this to everybody I know. It'd pop up in every future review of an Android 7-inch tablet.

Folks can make a very easy transition from analog books to a Kindle. The Nook Color is in the extreme easy to work with, nevertheless the fact that it's an Android app running on a 7" color tablet computer means that the Nook Color is always going to be just a little bit more complicated than a Kindle.

The Nook Color is tough to use

It's not that the Nook Color is tough to use. Now it has its rough edges. I often found myself a little lost in the UI and patiently wishing that there was a "Back" button; it's easy to tap out of somewhere and not find your way back. I'm baffled by the presence of two separate Search functions.

And the WiFi was a little bit squirrely, too. On my sample unit, the only way to get it to recognize a new wireless network was to turn the WiFi radio off and at that time on again.

It's the clear choice for anybody who can afford the extra dough, and who isn't stuck at Step One on the geek ladder. If the Kindle is the best reader for the kind of people who walk into the phone store and beeline for the model with the biggest buttons and the fewest features, the Nook Color anyway you look at it the best e-book reader for everybody else.