It’s been observed in the past that the Nook Color, with its color LCD display and its Android operating system, blurs the line between e-reader and tablet computer; consider that line erased. The Nook-hacking community has rooted Barnes & Noble’s $250 reader, and as the triumphal Angry Birds photo above indicates, this means that the Nook Color is now open to sideloaded Android apps. With an 800 MHz ARM Cortex A8-based processor, 512 MB RAM, and storage capacity of 2 GB, expandable to 16 GB with microSD (compare to the iPad’s 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 256 MB RAM, and storage from 16 to 64 GB), that’s not too shabby for the price.
Full Nook Color rooting instructions available here, but be warned: This is not a process for the total layman, and it involves entering some terminal commands and access to a Linux computer; it also completely erases your microSD card, and if you mess up, you risk bricking your Nook Color. While jailbreaking devices is legal, following through on this would almost certainly void one’s warranty.
