Questions from a nook shopper

[CenturionFive]

Ok, so some brief background. I have a Velocity Cruz Micro Reader that is working well as a reader but it has whet my appetite for a better Android Tablet.

I would love to get an Asus Transformer but I would rather wait several months to let it get the bugs worked out and the price to drop so I a looking for an interim tablet.

I was intrigued by the community support for the Nook and Barnes & Nobles willingness to let it thrive so I stopped by my local BAN to check one out. I played with one for about 15 minutes with no salesperson bothering me. Then I approached the one that looked most like a hacker and carefully started asking questions. First about it as a reader then about the possibility of using it as a tablet. He seemed very knowledgeable and when I asked about using it as a tablet he said that BAN plans an official software upgrade to Android 2.2 and it will be enabled as a tablet. He also volunteered that I could root the NOOK now and that him and 4 fellow BAN employees had and loved it. This sort of surprised me. He also said that it had 3G built in but it has not been enabled and that it did NOT have bluetooth.

I have read in the forums here that it did have bluetooth but that it was not enabled in firmware yet. Does it really have the hardware and the HOPE of bluetooth in the near future.

Does a rooted Nook have the ability to access hardware like a flashdrive or a keyboard/mouse through the microUSB port? What about tethering via USB through an android phone?

These are all things I would like to do.

Paul

 

[JackOnan]

As far as I know, there is no 3G on the NOOKcolor - could there be some confusion here with the first Nook? Bluetooth is built into the onboard chip, but is not enabled. We may see it enabled in the future.

Android 2.2 is reportedly coming in Feb or March - whether it will be fully enabled as a tablet is not known. There will be a proprietary market from B&N, but this is not the full google market. Rooting of course would allow these things.

There will most likely not be any way to use the mini usb connector for anything other than charging/pc access - it does not have any host capabilities that I know of. But bluetooth could be a workaround.

Tethering is possible and there are posts here by gadgetrants detailing the experience.

 

[CenturionFive]

As far as I know, there is no 3G on the NOOKcolor - could there be some confusion here with the first Nook? Bluetooth is built into the onboard chip, but is not enabled. We may see it enabled in the future.

It could be that the salesman was talking out his a$$ but he claimed there was 3G built in that was NOT enabled but that it might be . Not a big deal to me. Bluetooth on the otherhand would be. I would love to use an external keyboard at times and my bluetooth headset would be nice to use too.

Android 2.2 is reportedly coming in Feb or March - whether it will be fully enabled as a tablet is not known. There will be a proprietary market from B&N, but this is not the full google market. Rooting of course would allow these things.

There will most likely not be any way to use the mini usb connector for anything other than charging/pc access - it does not have any host capabilities that I know of. But bluetooth could be a workaround.

Tethering is possible and there are posts here by gadgetrants detailing the experience.

I am thinking about going with a 3G Hotspot anyway.

One other thing that the salesman said was that the Nook would NOT charge while connected to a PC, only the AC adapter. I have had devices with similar limitations in the past and found if they were connected to a powered hub that they would charge if I "ejected" them from the OS but let them plugged into the hub. Any truth to this?

Paul

 

[JackOnan]

The NC will trickle charge from a pc.

Sent from my nootered Nooker

 

[gadgetrants]

Jack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Matt

 

[gadgetrants]

Some of the "errors" the salesman made suggest he may have a few misconceptions. Regarding tethering, it's really simple: rooted or not, the Nook has no trouble finding a wifi signal broadcast in infrastructure mode. Unfortunately my Droid broadcasts in ad hoc (device-to-device) mode, so to get that working, you have to apply a quick fix to a system file on the Nook that enables the use of ad hoc mode.

My own 2 cents is I would suggest buying the Nook "as is" hardware-wise, specifically in regards to bluetooth. Some good progress is being made there, but it may happen in a week or it may not happen at all. If that's a deal-braker, there are some other tablets around the same price point or a bit more that offer bluetooth.

I'm glad that JackOnan hedged a little on 2.2 because I'm growing a bit skeptical about the timing. February or March is a healthy, conservative estimate. Again, I'd take the Nook as-is, rather than count on those things soon (boy have I seen some ANGRY smartphone owners who bought a phone with a "promised" OS update, which never arrived). But here's another cynical comment: look at how the Nook was released with 2.1 buried deep under the hood, and yet most owners here quickly rooted and turned it into a functional Android tablet. I'm guessing when B&N releases 2.2, either the same thing will happen (users like us will dump the UI and install a modified version of 2.2) OR if we're REALLY lucky a working version of Gingerbread (2.3) or Honeycomb (3.0) may be developed. Regardless, my eyebrows go up a bit when the words "B&N" and "tablet" get used in the same sentence. I just don't think I'll really want Barnes and Noble's version of an Android tablet.

Sorry for the sermon, but hey I picked the screenname for a reason!

-Matt

 

[JackOnan]

Jack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Matt

Hey Matt!! (I'm back - actually I never left - just been lurking and trying to get my post count up over at xda) I'm glad you chimed in since you tend to go into alot of useful detail and I agree with everything you said. I would add that its almost certain that we will get an official 2.2 - there are some reliable sources that have actually seen early builds. The question is of course, when. I'm sure we'll be jonesin' for that sweet Honeycomb goodness by the time we get 2.2