Why the NookColor Can't Double as a Business Tablet

With the news that the Barnes and Noble NookColor has been hacked to run the latest Android release, you might be looking at the cheap price tag and wondering if the device would make a cheap tablet--once all that e-book nonsense has been wiped off, clearly.

After all, at around $250, the NookColor is half the price of the cheapest Apple iPad, and around a third that of the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Apple's adamant that any tablet smaller than its iPad is unusable, with Steve Jobs quipping last year that 7-inch screens are useless "unless your tablet as well includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size." Apple spends plenty of time considering usability, so it's hard to argue with them.

E-book reader

When used as an e-book reader, the small screen size isn't an issue for the NookColor. However it becomes a major factor when used as a tablet. A smaller screen size might be fine for occasional browsing and viewing movies, yet for business a larger-size screen is going to win out each time. Can you imagine editing a presentation or creating a document on something little larger than a paperback book?

Barnes & Noble says you'll get eight hours out of the built-in battery reading books, which is already pretty short, and that's with wireless turned off. With wireless turned on and frequent Internet access, you'll be looking at a lot less time.

Yes, you can carry around the charger, and covertly leech off the coffee shop's electricity, nevertheless that's not what tablet computing is about. You're supposed to be able to go for a day or more without charging. Apple boasts 10 hours of surfing using Wi-Fi on the iPad, and the iPad 2 will almost undoubtedly improve on this.

Forget about video conferencing, which is one of the nascent areas of tablet computing. There's no camera on either side of the unit, and no microphone, so even Voice over IP is out of the question.