Good news for Nook Tablet owners. A lot of progress is being made on getting custom ROMs up and running on the Nook Tablet ever since devs cracked the Nook Tablet’s locked bootloader.

The devs at XDA have even managed to get CM7 to run on the Nook Tablet, although there are still a few key things that need to be fixed such as Wi-Fi and sleep mode.

Filed under: Nook | Tags: cm7, nook tablet | 9 Comments »

The people behind N2A cards for the Nook Color are offering a sizable reward to the first person who can crack the Nook Tablet’s locked bootloader and provide a bootable microSD card for Android 2.3 or Android 4.0.

N2A cards are a popular aftermarket mod for the Nook Color that turns it into a open Android tablet running CM7 (Android 2.3). All you do is place an N2A microSD in the Nook and everything runs from there, and you can choose to boot the Nook’s stock functionality as well, so it takes no technical work and the Nook Color isn’t changed in anyway so the warranty remains valid.

Filed under: Nook | Tags: nook tablet | 1 Comment »

Barnes and Noble announced two new Nook promotions today that will be ongoing until March 9th, 2012.

Basically, B&N are experimenting with the idea of offering discounts on Nook devices with the purchase of Nook subscriptions. This idea isn’t new—remember the Philly Newspapers selling the Archos Arnova 10 G2 for $99 with a subscription—but this is the first time Barnes and Noble has tried a promotion like this.

Filed under: Nook, Sales and Discounts | Tags: nook touch | 1 Comment »

Below is a step-by-step tutorial that includes a video walkthrough on how to root the Nook Tablet, install the Android Market, block OTA firmware updates, and other goodies—everything you need to turn it into a proper Android tablet not controlled by Barnes and Noble. Plus you can choose to keep the Nook’s regular features too, or remove them altogether, it’s your choice.

When Barnes and Noble first released the Nook Tablet, it came with a convenient loophole that allowed users to download and install apps from outside the Nook appstore, including Amazon’s appstore. But then B&N released a firmware update, version 1.4.1, right before Christmas that closed off this functionality and locked the Nook Tablet down from installing non-B&N apps.

Filed under: How To, Nook | Tags: nook tablet, root | 30 Comments »

For those of you that miss the web browser on the Nook Touch since Barnes and Noble updated the firmware to 1.1, there’s still a way to access it.

Before the update you could just type a url into the search bar and it would automatically launch a hidden Android web browser. It’s not an official feature and it doesn’t work very well, but it is there and it is somewhat usable.

Filed under: How To, Nook | Tags: nook touch | 7 Comments »

I noticed this morning that Barnes and Noble is selling the Nook Color for $179 from their eBay store.

They usually sell refurbished units on eBay but this is a brand new Nook Color. The refurbished Nooks are selling for $149. Since it is new, you’d think they would offer the same sale price at B&N.com, but they don’t. It is still $199 from there.

Filed under: Nook, Sales and Discounts | Tags: nook color | 1 Comment »

Since Barnes and Noble decided to issue a firmware update for the Nook Tablet, version 1.4.1, that disables the ability to install non-B&N apps from 3rd party sources and kills root, here’s how to revert the Nook Tablet back to the original 1.4.0 firmware and block the firmware update from happening.

Unfortunately firmware updates install automatically without giving us an option, so you have to block updates from happening manually. If your Nook Tablet is still on 1.4.0, jump down to the second section for blocking OTA updates. If your Nook Tablet has already updated to 1.4.1 or some future version, here’s how to go back to the original user-friendly 1.4.0.

Filed under: How To, Nook | Tags: nook tablet | 28 Comments »

Barnes and Noble suck. They just issued an update for the Nook Tablet that effectively turns it from a full-blown Android tablet into a glorified color ereader with benefits.

The firmware update, version 1.4.1, closes the Nook Tablet off from installing Android apps from non-B&N sources. So now instead of having tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of apps available to load on the Nook, now users are stuck with only what B&N provides, about 2000 apps, some of which are 2-3 times what they sell for from other appstores.

Filed under: Nook | Tags: firmware update, nook tablet | 28 Comments »

Now is a good time for a Nook Tablet vs Nook Color comparison review since Barnes and Noble issued a firmware update for the Nook Color to add some new features earlier in the week.

Even before the new firmware it was pretty hard to tell the Nook Tablet and Nook Color apart, and now they are practically identical twins from a software standpoint. I bet the average person would have trouble pointing out many differences after 5 minutes of use on each.

Filed under: Nook, Reviews, Tablets | Tags: nook color, nook tablet | 12 Comments »

For this review I’m going to compare the Kindle Touch with the Nook Touch and Sony Reader PRS-T1. I’ve already compared the Nook and Sony head-to-head, both stock and rooted, so this review is going to focus on comparing each of them with the Kindle Touch specifically.

On the surface all three ebook reader are very similar. They have the same 6″ E Ink Pearl displays and the same infrared touchscreens. When you start to analyze their features, however, they are all very different. Each one offers advantages the others do not.

Filed under: Amazon Kindle, Nook, Reviews, Sony | Tags: kindle touch, nook touch, sony prs-t1 | 10 Comments »