Real Exotica

Nook Color Unveiled by Barnes and Noble

Nook in color. It has finally happened. At one of its Manhattan stores today, Barnes & Noble introduced Nook Color, a $249 e-reading tablet that delivers books, magazines, newspapers and children's books in color. The sub-one pound, half-inch thick Android-based device has a 7-inch touchscreeen.
Barnes & Noble is taking orders now. The Nook Color ships on November 19. It will be available in Best Buy, Walmart, BAM (Books A Million) and of course Barnes & Noble's own stores. Noble will continue to sell its existing black-and-white Nook devices too.
 Noble CEO William Lynch says that the company is not thinking about lowering the price any time soon, regardless of what competitors such as Amazon and Apple do. "Reading in brilliant color is the killer app," he says.
More than two million book titles will be available for the device, most for $9.99 or less and obviously not all in color. Nook Newsstand will have over 100 titles at launch, including magazines from Conde Nast and Hearst and newspapers such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY. Single copy and subscriptions will be available.
The company says you can go from finding a book to reading it in under 12 seconds.
The first color Nook will be Wi-Fi only, though Lynch says a 3G device could happen. The device has 8 gigabytes of internal memory, enough to hold about 6,000 books. Barnes & Noble says the battery will last about 8 hours.
Also on hand is a browser (no support for Adobe Flash), music player and such apps as Pandora streaming Internet radio. You can also play games (crosswords, chess, etc.).
The biggest applause at the launch event came when Barnes & Noble showcased a read out loud feature for kid's books. This will be a great guide for the young-learning reader.
Nook color is a welcome addition to the portable hand-held device market.