NOOK Color by Barnes and Noble WiFi eReader Refurb BNRV200 $139 Shipped

tempted... tempted....

for those of you who do buy a nook color from Buy.com or soemwhere else here is some useful info:

I just bought one from a friend and re flashed it to run CyangenMod 7.2 (= Android Gingerbread 2.3).
It is now a VERY nice <$150 android tablet that my kids enjoy using.

It is pretty stable with only the rare lock up that requires a reset after hours of abuse form the 2 year old.

Almost all the Android Market 10c kids apps from the Christmas promotion and the free Amazon app store kids apps that I have been collecting since the start work on it full screen and native (high) res.

I am also able to encode videos (from DVD or whatever) to play on it using "HandBrake" which is a very well supported (free) video encoder - you just have to use the right settings....

CM7.2 install introductions :
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1030227

Handbrake preset instructions for nook:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=894165

Edit: CM9 (aka Icecream sandwich) for the nook color is only in very early alpha and full video acceleration is not yet working so stay away (for the time being) unless you like the bleeding edge....

I got one as well and flashed it to CM7 right away. I use it daily and have the kindle app loaded on it. I picked up a $20 bluetooth OBD-2 dongle from eBay and use torque on the tablet to monitor my cars perf and read/clear the codes. It is way more practical/useful than I thought it would be.

I bought one of these for around $130 during the Christmas season and it has been fantastic. It has basically replaced my laptop for 90% of the tasks I used it for. If your Nook is slow running android, one thing I'd check to see is what brand of SD card you are using. I was using a Kingston and android was painfully slow. Switched to a Sandisk Class 4 (make sure it's a legit card) and it has been blazing fast ever since. It's crazy the things that work with it; my latest and current favorite is playing old NES/SNES roms with a wiimote.

What's the warranty on this? I've heard some say 90 days, some say full one year.

I just called Barnes and Noble and they said this has a one year warranty.

Tax for CA, so I never buy anything from buy ah well...

EuroCat said:   farside said:   Text
Buy.com, No thanks.

Why, besides the reason of hit by tax in CA?

I have bought quite some items, including a couple Nooks from Buy.com and haven't had any problem yet.

cerodinero said:   
Does anyone smarter than me know if I can "copy" the contents of my sd card to a 4gb card? I'm assuming you can use WinImage or something to make a backup and restore it on a new card, but I haven't looked into it much yet.

I doubt I'm smarter than you, but I did make an image of the card and then "burned" it to a new, larger card--go get the 16 GB card: you'll fill it up eventually. The trickier part is resizing the partition of that image to take advantage of the space (in other words, you're burning a 2GB image to a 4GB card and you need to move the partition so you can use the additional 2 GBs). I found something on Google for this and it wasn't that bad.

These two links may help.

Also, FWIW, I believe Class 4 is supposed to be the best for these devices. I'm using a Sandisk Class 4 16GB and it flies. You can use the internal memory for storage, but it can be hard to navigate all the way around.

KMCHERRY said:   Also, FWIW, I believe Class 4 is supposed to be the best for these devices. I'm using a Sandisk Class 4 16GB and it flies. You can use the internal memory for storage, but it can be hard to navigate all the way around.
The issue is that a lot of people think "class 10 is faster than class 4" and buy the class 10. It isn't that simple. Class 10 cards are tuned for faster sequential read/write speeds, so they beat out class 4 at sequential read/writes. But they price they pay for this is that their random read/write speeds, especially for smaller files, will be slower. That is, the class 4 is typically faster than the class 10 at random read/writes of small files.

For recording pictures or especially video, the sequential write speed is what's important. So for a camera memory card, you want the class 10. But an operating system has lots of small files which need to be read/written all the time. The class 4/6 will in most cases perform better than the class 10 as a boot memory card.

Here are sequential speeds for a bunch of cards: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microsdhc-memory-card-perfor...
You can see how the class 10 cards stack up at the top.

Here are the random speeds (scroll to bottom for 4k writes): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microsdhc-memory-card-perfor...
See how the order has mostly flipped, with the worse-performing cards being primarily class 10?

For the Nook Color in particular, some class 10 cards are so slow at these random read/writes that the tablet will timeout and fail to boot off of them.

darkmeridian said:   Ice Cream Sandwich has been running on the Nook Color quite beautifully for a few weeks now. I love it.

Where do you get your Ice Cream Sandwich? TIA. I've been running CM7/Gingerbread 2.3 on my Nook Color and would like to try ICS on it.

Big2mouth said:   EuroCat said:   farside said:   Text
Buy.com, No thanks.

Why, besides the reason of hit by tax in CA?

I have bought quite some items, including a couple Nooks from Buy.com and haven't had any problem yet.

Buy.com = BUST. I've been burned badly by Buy.com (as have numerous other people -- which explains the disproportionate dislike for Buy.com) so I would gladly pay $10 more to receive it from BN.com

I guess there aren't any Kindle fans here?

For those of you who do not need this right away, OfficeMax sells these new not refurbished for $200 and in december they had a 20% off coupon which was good on etablets.
Of course you will have tax too.

ChinaRider said:   It's getting more and more tempting to pick up one of these. I'm still holding out for the price to hit the $100 point...

Lots of good information in this thread with regards to setting up Android. Have any of you actually installed Android on the Nook vs. running it off of an SD card?

I've never run mine off a SD card. Knew I had no use for the B&N interface so I flashed it with CM7 soon after I got it. I used to keep up with the Nightly releases but got busy during the holidays and am no longer up to date. Probably will switch to a stable release or maybe try ICS. Not sure which Nightly I'm on but it's been very stable. At most a couple of lockups that required a reboot.

Definitely a great tablet for the money.

Hard to find a deal on the Kindle Fire. I ordered a used on off of Amazon market place for $89, but my order was cancelled.