Specifications

Barnes & Noble Nook Color
The advent of Amazon's Kindle was a sea-change in the lives of millions of readers. Instead of
carrying one book, avid readers could carry more than one thousand books in a package smaller
than many trade paperbacks. Not to miss out on this exciting new market, other makers rushed to
develop e-book readers of their own. Perhaps the most successful of these competitors has been
Barnes & Noble, with their Nook color . The latest evolution of the Nook adds a full color
display to the mix, and the device has some major advantages that make it a very attractive
option. While the primary function is e-book support, the Nook adds many of the functions of a
fully equipped tablet PC, at a much lower cost level.
User Experience
The organization of the device is very user friendly, and navigation is done via an array of home
screens. Users can manage their currently downloaded books and magazines on some screens,
while others provide access to menus and settings. Users have the option to change the order of
recently used documents or titles, allowing the creation of customized viewing orders. Refresh
rates and responsiveness could be improved, but otherwise this interface is well-received. The
intent of Barnes & Noble was to make the experience as close as possible to the tactile sense of
handling physical books or magazines, and they've succeeded.
The Nook is equipped with a 7" full color screen, running a 1024 x 600 resolution. The display
has 16 million color capability and has been designed to provide extra-wide viewing angles. For
users who share books (like parents reading to children), this is an important consideration. The
casing consists of smoothed plastic on the sides, and a rubberized back to ensure a solid grip on
the device. Portability and comfortable use are ensured by the low weight (below one pound) and
slim profile (less than ½ inch thick). It is difficult to hit the "sweet spot" between a feeling of
substantiality and maintaining a low weight for portability, but Barnes & Noble have done well.
While the Nook is not running a very high-spec hardware set, it manages to handle applications
quite well.
Users should not be concerned about the storage capacity of the Nook Color. While the device
has 8GB of onboard storage, the surprise is that the device also supports microSD cards up to
32GB. This means your library can be virtually limitless.
In terms of applications, the Nook Color manages to integrate the applications most users will
need. An onboard MP3 player means that you can load and listen to music while reading. All
web-based mail applications, like Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, are supported, and the device also
includes web-browsing. Finally, a solid selection of games for children and for adults ensures
that users won't get bored.
Overall