My first experience with tablets was when I bought a Kindle Fire. That didn’t go well.
Then I bought a Nook Color, but I found the range of apps to be too limited. There wasn’t even a replacement for the default (lousy) Android keyboard. So, I got a card from the N2A Card people and booted the Nook Color into regular Android. That worked a lot better.
But it was still not completely satisfactory. For example. playing audio files didn’t work very well (they’d skip occasionally, maybe because of the booting-from-a-card thing).
But then three things happened in pretty rapid succession:
1. Barnes & Noble announced that their newer Nooks would have access to the entire Android app store (not just the Nook store).
2. B&N announced that they were dropping the prices on the Nook tablets quite a bit (the cheapest would be $149).
3. Press reports started saying that Microsoft was going to buy the entire Nook operation (they own a piece of it already). The details of that aren’t known (partly because it hasn’t happened yet), but it would seem to indicate that Nooks which run Android would probably not be long for this world.
Well, in between #2 and #3, I bought me a Nook HD (did I mention the part about it being $149?). When #3 happened, I still had time to return it, but I’m keeping it.
I confess this is somewhat of a gut decision. I like the Nook. It’s well designed and feels good in my hand. Which is also true of the Kindle, but not of the Kindle Fire, which always felt clunky and awkward in my hand, even apart from the interface and screen problems.
Also (and I know I’m not the only one to do this), I downloaded the Kindle app, so now I have my Kindle books on my Nook :-).
The music-playing is fine, and it’s good for watching videos, too (I bought Les Miserables natch).
So, so far, so good.
(And now there are reports that the Microsoft deal isn’t happening anyway.)
I was (am) skeptical about the Microsoft buying Nook reports. The news started leaking after it was public that Nook was getting the full Google Play store, which basically opens the Nook up to being a real tablet.
It didn’t strike me as sensible. Why, if there were backroom discussions about MS buying Nook, would Nook go Full-Android all of a sudden? (And yes, there are always backroom discussions before things like this are finalized.) The introduction of the Play store suggested something else.
So what’s really next for B&N and Nook? I don’t know, yet. But I’m interested to find out.
Well, I agree that it didn’t seem sensible, but neither did Windows 8. 🙂
And it may well be that B&N sees a better option (from their POV) than Microsoft. Access to the Play store gives them a clear advantage over the Amazon tablets, which they didn’t have before. Like you, I’m interested to see what happens next.