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Nook Color will be available from November 19 at $249

Nook ColorIt looks like the competition of eBook readers is getting tougher. And Barnes & Noble is trying to get one step ahead of Amazon by a bold approach: Nook Color.

Some would call it a poor man’s tablet PC or some would call a rich eBook reader but it must impress you with the first look. It has many more options than a simple eBook reader. Run by Android OS it features a 7-inch capacitive VividView touchscreen which will make it a better alternative to Kindle. The color contents like magazine or photo books have found a new place to show up with a screen capable of viewing 16 million colors. It has an internal memory of 8 GB which can be expanded with up to 32 GB with microSD memory cards.

The brain of this eBook is an ARM Cortex A8 (800MHz) processor which will let you do many things like playing AAC and MP3 songs (with 3.5 mm headphone jack or built in speaker), playing MP4 format videos, listening to online radio, editing Microsoft Office files with Quick Office software (doc, ppt, txt, xls, docx and many more formats) and also playing games like Crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Chess, etc. After seeing all these features it becomes worthless to say it has Wi-Fi connectivity.

You can also use Facebook and Twitter from this device. As it is an Android 2.0(you can hack it to make it 2.2 too!) device it is really customizable in every aspect. In this case it defeats all the other eBook readers on the market. The touch screen is very responsive and easy to use even for kids. For kids it has a whole section called Nook Kids full of kid’s books. In lazy moments it can read a story aloud with its Read To Me feature. It has another feature that made it more look like a kindle killer approach which is called LendMe. And the name says it all. You can lend your books to others for 14 days but there is a disadvantage that you can not read the lent book for these 14 days. These are all the good sides of Nook Color.

Nook Color on Landscape

As usual there is a number of issues that may make you think again before you buy it. Firstly in comparison to Amazon Kindle’s one month battery life, Nook Color battery lasts only 8 hours. For reading a book that may not be a sufficient duration. And there is also a bad news for Android lovers. B&N will not give you access to the Android Market. So your list of apps will be very short. With such price it should have 3G connectivity though many are taking this as a blessing as it will have no connection prices.

So if you are a serious reader, it is not recommended to use this LCD display over E-Ink as the battery life counts more than a colourful experience.(With E-Ink technology Amazon Kindle can reach 1 month battery life).

Wrapping it up, if you want an eBook reader and also a tablet(almost) Nook Color is the one for you and is going to be available on November 19 at $249.

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5 Comments

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