My first reactions to NOOKcolor

Originally posted on B&N's NOOK forum.

The Daily on my NOOK just updated, so you can read about the NOOKcolor from the B&N Unbound blog (or you could just read the post here http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unbound-NOOK-NOOKcolor-and/NOOKcolor-The-Ultimate-Reading-Experience/ba-p/695350

 

I doubt I'll be getting a NOOKcolor in the near future, since I just got a NOOK in August. But I'm still geeking out over the announcement! Here's what I think of the NOOKcolor, off the top of my head:

 

• I like that it's color, but I'm not sure about the LCD. Is VividView that much different from standard LCD? I dislike that I can't read my NOOK without a light in the dark, but I'm excited for color.
• I like that it's touchscreen. I'll occasionally tap the e-ink screen on my NOOK thinking it's a touchscreen by accident. It's more intuitive to have a touchscreen on a device with such a small screen. 
• I still want more periodicals for the NOOK, like Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Wired, Poetry; plus blogs like Huffington Post. I know I can read online, but the web browser's still pretty clunky, especially compared to reading an ebook on the NOOK.
• I wish they had the "read to me" function for adult books. If I could turn books I read into audiobooks, I would love my NOOK even more. I have audio files loaded on to my NOOK, but I don't really listen to them there. The speakers aren't all that loud, and if I want to carry tunes around I listen to my mp3 player.
• I think the "read to me" feature for kids is a great way to help kids learn to read. A few live bloggers suggested it's for lazy parents. It's also for kids who want to have read to them the same books over and over and over, or who aren't fortunate enough to have parents who can take lots of time to read to them. It can never hurt to make reading more fun and more accessible to kids. Literacy is the best gift we can give our children.
• I like that it that you can share quotes on Twitter & Facebook. This will make reading more social, a shared experience, and it can help add some quality content to social network posts. 
• I like that it plays video, but I don't know if it plays any flash on a website, or if it has to be in an enhanced ebook. 
• I like that I can carry around my .doc files, although I use OpenOffice, so I'd have to convert files, which I often do to send them to other people, but to have to do that for every file I wanted to manipulate on NOOKcolor could be a lot of work. I don't know if you can create and save .doc files, though it appears you can. That would be great, for taking notes or writing an essay or poem on the fly. Will it be able to support DropBox, so I can sync my .doc files to my laptop. That would be very cool.
• I don't like that it doesn't have Android Market (I don't think it does). That means I can't throw any app I want, but they have to be preapproved by B&N. As an open source user, I prefer the ability to choose what I want on my machine, not what the manufacturer of my device or system deems acceptable. I'm guessing it will be unhackable as well, and that turns me off. Ideally I could get an Android tablet from somewhere else and put the B&N Android app on it (but then it wouldn't have all the extra bells & whistles of the NOOKcolor either). That way I could have freedom to put what I wanted on my own device that was completely open source. But since Apple is even more closed to open source, and there doesn't seem to be a comparable Android tablet coming to the market anytime soon, if I were to get a tablet I would strongly consider the NOOKcolor. B&N has been pretty good at updating firmware and putting on what customers want, so the NOOKcolor will likely evolve and get better.