What are /r/nookcolor's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Upgrade to latest Nook Color firmware from here.

Plug the NC into your computer and copy the "sideload_update.zip" file into the root directory of the NC. Set it aside and after a few minutes it will install the update.

Root using Autonooter. Step-by-step video here.

Reformat the SD card afterwards so you can use the whole thing for storage. (winimager32 makes it a 32*meg* despite the 4 gb size. (Total waste)

Beware: Once you do this, hours and hours of your life will evaporate as you mess around on the market and playing with the settings. (I really liked the NC, now i love it.)

Just posting this as it is a common question:

Netflix does work, but not the most recent version that is downloaded from the Play Store. You must find a place that has the 1.8.1 APK (like here for example) and it will work. Thanks to Frog_Todd.

More amusing than interesting, since B&N is trying to add their own market instead of opening things up.

Yes this is the most affordable replacement. To have all the abilities of a tablet you will have to root it, there are a lot of write ups for this. Barnes and noble has a store on ebay and they sell them refurbished for $149. Epub format works great on the nook color. I have had no issues reading anything, there is no light sensor so the display does not dim and brighten when you go from a light area to a dark area, but I have never had an issue with it.

I recently rooted mine, and have been digging through essential app guides since. Though Gizmodo definitely took a turn for the worse, they have good app guides such as their Essential Directory. They also have their daily and weekly app suggestions. Apps, apps, apps!

in my experience, phiremod runs more smoothly than the nook nightlies. check out the website. i only really notice a difference when playing games some games like Plants vs Zombies though.

EDIT - so i just noticed that a MIUI version has been added. I have not used this one. I'm on Phiremod V7 Test2.

No it isn't really difficult at all. There's several ways to do it. I know some people prefer to keep the stock B&N installation intact and they run from a bootable sdcard. I installed it right onto the nook's internal storage - it isn't that difficult to revert back to stock if you want or need to.

If you've already got an older version of CM on your nook, you probably won't have many issues at all. I'm assuming that you've already got some version of clockwork mod on it - if so, just make sure it is updated. They suggest you do wipe/reset of the device, wipe cache, and wipe dalvik cache. Then download the zip for cm10b4, put it on your SD card and install it through clockwork mod. You might need to reboot in to CWM and wipe the battery stats, too - there's some issue where it reports high battery usage by bluetooth, even if bluetooth is turned off - wiping the battery stats fixes that for some reason. It isn't going to be as zippy as previous versions (they don't have overclocking built in to it yet...), but it runs really well.

If you are a netflix user, you won't be able to use the current version of the app that is on the market, you'll need ver 1.8.1, which you can get HERE (thanks to Frog_Todd)

I'm pretty picky, but to me, this build seems quite useable.

> How safe is it to flash the eMMC with CM7? If it goes awry, is there a recovery option akin to reflashing .sbf files for the Droid phones?

It's very safe. The NOOKcolor is virtually brick-proof since the SD card has priority during the boot process so you can always load ClockworkMod Recovery to fix things.

Here's a guide on how to revert to the stock B&N ROM. Either that, or make a system backup through ClockworkMod before flashing CM7.

Edit:

> Is it better just to buy at full price from B&N to have a place to return it, or would rooting it void the warranty anyways?

I would buy one from B&N only because I've had bad experiences with buying stuff off Craigslist. (I was trying to buy another Motorola Droid for development purposes and the seller claimed it had a clean ESN. When I met with the seller, I called Verizon Wireless and it was flagged as stolen and the seller then tried to sell it to me for half the original asking price.) However, B&N's official stance is that modifying the device (either rooting the device to install Android apps on the stock ROM or installing a new ROM entirely) voids your warranty. If that's a problem, you can dual boot between the stock ROM and CyanogenMod (see my post below).

Shamless advertising from a happy cardholder: if you have an American Express card (issued by American Express and not a third party like Bank of America/MBNA), buy your NOOKcolor with it. They'll extend your warranty by a year and they tend to be pretty good about reimbursing the full price of an item or they'll replace it with something of equal value. The (brand-name) power supply that I bought for my old computer caught fire under heavy load and they credited my account within a few days.

I've got a centralized deluge server running in the house, and each machine runs deluge as a client to it (so all torrent downloads are centralized and easily suspendable).

To that end, I use transdroid to act as a front-end to deluge (via the web plugin).

Also check the autonooter zip file with this program:

http://download.cnet.com/MD5-Checker/3000-2092_4-10410639.html

It should spit out the following key, if not download the file again. MD5 FB74865663B8D797A486A85022FAD9B2

The refresh rate for e-ink is horrible, not great for a tablet but great for a reader...

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/e-inks-color-triton-e-paper-screens-make-their-debut/ <-- link may be a bit dated

I'm using CM7 with dalingrin's kernel. I watch videos I've converted with the same handbrake preset with no problems, using moboplayer (neon version). Battery drains fairly quickly if I have everything turned up, but I think you can set "min cpu frequency" low and the ondemand governor will auto adjust the clock speed while idle to conserve battery life.

i've been using the phiremod beta2 froyo rom from with the darlingrin kernel. very stable android 2.2.1 with amazing speed. i got around a 1250 quadrant benchmark score.

these are both easily flashable from Clockwork Recovery. this runs on the internal memory so you will loose the benefits of the B&N stock stuff, but i think the other readers are better any way.

I've got a NC in Australia. Couple of suggestions:

• If you want to order in advance, contact the hotel your mother will stay at and ensure that they will take/hold the delivery. I've found in the past that putting "Guest - April 14th" in the address helps the hotel. That said, buying from brick and mortar is a good option.

• You'll only be able to purchase books from B&N's store whilst connecting from a US (and possibly Canadian) IP address. This is not a limitation for placing the order for Nook hardware, as long as you specify a US address for the credit card (they don't actually validate the address, I used my Australian card).

• Get around the IP address restrictions with a VPN, ala Hotspot Shield. Place your orders whilst it is enabled. Note that this means you'll need to order via a PC, unless you have rooted your Nook and can run a VPN on it directly (I don't have experience with this).

• Download your purchases directly onto your Nook from B&N. Once the purchase has validated, you can download from anywhere - there is no geo-IP check.

Bottom line (my take): B&N want to sell you hardware and books, but are bound by publisher's agreements not to sell books outside the US. They police it lightly (which takes care of 90% of their customers) but don't mind if we manage to circumvent. Better than piracy ;)

Edit: putting "Guest - April 14th" won't help if your mother is visiting in May. Just saying.

I have this class 10, 8GB mSD card: Patriot LX Series Class 10 8GB Micro SDHC Flash Card. I ran the honeycomb release last week off it, and while I'm sure the speed of the card was sufficient, I think the current build is not exactly ready for daily use. It's a good proof of concept, but I didn't quite know what to do with it, that I couldn't do with a more stable ROM.

I've used the rooted stock 1.1, and my current .68 Nookie Froyo, both booting from the internal memory, and it has been more than sufficient for daily use.

I guess having a Honeycomb mSD is fun though. Definitely go with the class 10, you'll need the speed. and mine was $25 with free shipping.

You'll need microSD. I always buy name brand stuff, so like kingston or patriot. Just read some reviews and see if people complain a lot. Newegg Search

Anyone flash it yet? How's it go? Beta 2 had some SOD bugs so I held off.

Edit: Netflix does work, but not the most recent version that is downloaded from the Play Store. You must find a place that has the 1.8.1 APK (like here for example) and it will work. Thanks to Frog_Todd.

Edit: I flashed it and after getting it all setup it is pretty good! I don't think it is as fast as CM7, but I also can't o/c to 1.2 GHZ.

My guess is you're running to the NC's limited codec compatibility. The faq goes over it in detail, but in short, it accepts only simple profiles for MPEG4 and baseline/main/high for H264. Using either codec, the max resolution is 854x480.

My guess your files exceed that resolution, but whatever the case may be, they can be converted ('transcoded') to compatible specs using tools such as handbrake. Transcodes can be tedious and time consuming, but if you're not interested in rooting, they are a workable option.

There are new Enhanced Nook Books that include embedded video and audio, and you can only view them using rooted or unrooted stock. Same goes for children's books. If you flash a new ROM like CM7, you lose the B&N e-reader capabilities for that sort of thing.

This isn't the original source I read it from but here is a source. I recognize that source is pretty old but I couldn't find the source that I remember reading it from, which was more recent. Too bad Ic an't find that source.

> It's a "curated" experience, meaning they'll have to approve apps for the store, which developers can start submitting in "early 2011," with apps approved "within weeks" of submission. So the apps that we saw at the launch, like Pandora, is all that'll be available for a couple of months.

Also

>their goal is to "extend the reading experience through applications,"

While the story notes that that definition will be followed loosely, there are a lot of apps that won't fall under that guideline.

EDIT: I've only found 2 apps that haven't worked on my Nook from the Market: Google Earth and the normal Android Nook app. If you ran into trouble after downloading, you can always get a refund quickly.

The Large Plain Notebook from Moleskine is the right thickness and is practically the exact same dimensions of a Nook, but you would have to just rip out all the pages and either go without edge protection or incorporate an edge material yourself. There's a cool guide on doing just that on Instructables, but I didn't have the materials for it.