Home ›

Barnes and Noble's Nook

Issue 200

From Issue #200
December 2010

Feb 01, 2011  By Bill Childers
 in
For some retailers, e-books now are outselling paper books. E-book readers put a library in your hand—it may be time for you to make the plunge into e-books.
Conclusion

Overall, I like the Nook. Since I got my Nook, I've found myself “unplugging” from the computer and reading more. I like my Nook so much that the day after I got mine, I ran back to Barnes & Noble and bought my wife a Wi-Fi Nook. If I had to make the purchase again, I'd have gotten a Wi-Fi-only Nook myself, as I've used the 3G to purchase a book exactly once. The Nook's shortcomings aren't showstoppers to owning one, unless you need to rely on its Web browsing ability or need the fastest in screen refresh—in which case you probably shouldn't get any E Ink e-reader. It's hard to go wrong with the Wi-Fi Nook at the current $149 price point, and although the extra $50 for the 3G probably won't bankrupt anyone, it's more gimmicky than functional, as it's not very hard to find Wi-Fi around for downloading books. At any rate, if you're in the market for a dedicated e-reader, check out the Nook.

Managing Your Content with Calibre

Calibre is a cross-platform open-source program that's designed to manage electronic books and other texts. It'll convert between e-reader formats as well as PC formats, like PDF and HTML, and it will download cover art and other e-book attributes automatically from the Internet. It's really easy to use, and it syncs with the Nook flawlessly. If you have a lot of pre-existing content in other formats you want to put on your Nook, Calibre's the only way to go.

Calibre, an E-book Management Program

Softrooting the Nook

The Nook is an Android device, and as such, is capable of being “rooted”, giving you full access to the hardware via the removal of software constraints. The softroot for the Nook is fairly easy to do, and you can do simply by downloading and installing a couple firmware bundles. After your Nook's been softrooted, you'll have the ability to change the launcher's main menu icons, as well as install other Android apps like Pandora. There are a couple Nook-specific applications as well: Trook (a way to download books you already own via Wi-Fi outside of the Barnes & Noble store) and Twook (a Twitter client with many of the same faults as the Web browser app). Note that at the time of this writing, new Nooks with serial numbers starting in the 1003 series are not compatible with the current softroot. Take care and check with the NookDevs site (see Resources) before attempting a softroot. If in doubt, don't do it!

Resources

Barnes & Noble Nook Home Page: www.nook.com

NookDevs Home Page: nookdevs.com

Calibre Home Page: calibre-ebook.com

Bill Childers is an IT Manager in Silicon Valley, where he lives with his wife and two children. He enjoys Linux far too much, and probably should get more sun from time to time. In his spare time, he does work with the Gilroy Garlic Festival, but he does not smell like garlic.

______________________

Bill Childers is the Virtual Editor for Linux Journal. No one really knows what that means.

Webcast
More Resources
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers

Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.

Learn More

Sponsored by AMD

White Paper
More Resources
Red Hat White Paper: Using an Open Source Framework to Catch the Bad Guy

Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.

Learn More

Sponsored by DLT Solutions