But chances are, you're not willing to pay the expensive prices for those "jack of all trades" devices—the tablet computers that let you read eBooks, watch movies and listen to music on just one device. A tablet would merely be a luxury item for most of us. If you want to listen to music, you'll get one of the many, cheap MP3 players available.
If you want to watch movies, try the iPod Touch. But what if there was a way to bypass the hefty price tag of tablet computers? With its color touchscreen and integrated-web apps, you'd think it was an Android tablet. That means it's made to run the Android OS, so why settle for the dumbed down version when you can have the full OS?
In order to turn your Nook Color into a powerful Android tablet, you have to "root" it, which means you'll be gaining access to the the operating system and making unauthorized changes. These are the pre-requisites for this hack you can call it "root" or "jailbreak" if you prefer. For this example, I'll be using a Mac computer. But you can find detailed instructions on using Linux or Windows at devNook.
Unzip the file, which in my case, was automatically done when it entered my Downloads folder. It will be about 42 MB. Mount your microSD to your Mac. You can also use a USB card reader. Open up a terminal window on your Mac and find which drive the microSD card is mapped to.
You can do this by typing the command:. Now copy the files from the downloaded nooter file to the microSD card by typing one of the following, depending on your Nook firmware version and then press Enter :. You'll also need an SD card adapter to connect the SD card to your computer, unless your computer has an SD card slot built-in.
Once you get your Nook Color rooted and running your favorite Android apps, you can always kick it up another notch by trying out an early version of the Honeycomb 3. As you'll see, the Nook Color is a pretty nice piece of hardware. He's co-author of the book, Follow the Geeks. Editor's Picks. The best programming languages to learn in Check for Log4j vulnerabilities with this simple-to-use script. TasksBoard is the kanban interface for Google Tasks you've been waiting for. Paging Zefram Cochrane: Humans have figured out how to make a warp bubble.
Both apps work well and even have pinch to zoom. By hacking the Nook Color you can install much more versatile web browsers than the stock browser it comes with. I like Dolphin HD because of the tabs, volume key scrolling, and the boatload of add-ons and features. Other browsers worth mentioning are Opera Mini, it has some nice features and loads faster than Dolphin HD. And Skyfire is another popular choice because it can play videos. There's FireFox beta too. I tested several news apps with varying success.
Since they were designed for phones with smaller screens most use small fonts. Some apps can adjust font size and others can't. These three below all work pretty well.
Now that they've simplified the hacking process, added the Android Market app, and added soft buttons for apps that require menu and back buttons to work properly, there really isn't much of a downside in hacking the Nook Color, aside from potentially voiding the Nook Color's warranty or somehow bricking it in the process.
But unless things go really wrong you can easily reset the Nook Color back to original pre-hacked condition by doing a factory reset. There are other problems, though. Such as the fact that some apps simply aren't going to work because the Nook Color isn't a cellphone and most Android apps were developed for cellphones. Contrary to what I'd initially expected, the Nook Color makes a fairly decent Android tablet, especially given its high-quality screen, speedy processor for 3D games and HD video, and competitive price compared to similar devices.
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