Review of the Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet

The Nook Tablet is a great eReader that also has some functionality of a tablet.

If you are expecting a fully functional tablet like an Apple iPad or any Android Operating System Based Tablet like the Samsung Galaxy, think again.

• There are over 300,000 applications available for Android devices on the Android Marketplace. Unfortunately, Barnes and Noble has blocked your access to these applications. Amazon has a library of approximately 20,000 applications. Access to this library is also blocked by Barnes and Noble. You are limited to the Barnes and Noble library of 1,200 applications.
• Since the Android Operating System is owned by Google, a key component of any application is it's interaction with Gmail in order to synchronize data such as contacts, task lists or calendar information. The entire Gmail infrastructure is unavailable for the Nook Tablet. Any application that requires synchronization will need to have an alternative method of sharing data from the tablet to your PC and smart phone. 
• If a book, magazine or newspaper is not offered in the Barnes and Noble format, it is unavailable to you.

If you have a smart phone, you may have the ability to install more than one eReader such as the Kindle eReader from Amazon. By having more than one eReader, there was a good chance that your smart phone could access the book, magazine or newspaper you were interested in. Until recently, there was a way of loading applications from the Amazon Marketplace and the application files themselves from the Internet onto your tablet using a process call side loading. Think of this process as a back door to add applications to your tablet without going through the Barnes and Noble process of installing applications. Unfortunately, a recent upgrade to the firmware of the Nook Tablet closed the back door.

In order to restore the back door, you must initialize your tablet to the factory installed defaults. This erases all your data and all your back door installed applications. You must also root your tablet to stop the automatic installation of the update to your firmware that disabled your back door. Rooting is basically a way of granting you administrative privileges so that you can modify the operating system. Once you have rooted your tablet, you can change a setting so that automatic firmware updates will  not be installed.

If you are looking for a great eReader with some functionality as a tablet, the Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet is worth looking at. If you want a full function tablet, an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy may be more to your liking.

Carl Thorne High Tech House Calls Expert Computer Consulting 

voice: 404.229.0839 email: carlthorne@hthcatlanta.com web: hthcatlanta.com blog: hthcatlanta.blogspot.com

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