With Borders now just a memory, and their spot in Crossgates Mall replaced with a Christmas store, there is only Barnes & Noble to stand up to powerhouse Amazon. And I have to say, that their job will not be an easy one. But B&N's new Android based Nook tablet, may help as a counter to Amazon's Kindle Fire.

Barnes And Noble Unveils Their E-Book Reader The Nook
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Barnes & Noble CEO Willaim Lynch showed off the new tablet Monday tossing out the usual adjectives that seem to have become common buzzwords in recent marketing. "With the Nook Tablet we are delivering the best media device ever created in a portable form factor," he said from their Union Square store in New York City. The big points he made about the device were the battery life and screen resolution. The display has a new proprietary design called "VivdView" which will be much more clearer and have a wider viewing angle from other devices. And battery life would be 8 hours even watching movies. As for the rest of it, it's an e-reader and can stream movies and music. They have already signed with Hulu and Netflix for the video, and the Nook store will let you subscribe to magazines and buy e-books.

Lynch went on to compare the Nook to the Kindle Fire by saying it was in essence under powered for media, or game. He conviently left out that his tablet doesn't have access to the Android store, so no third party apps can be loaded, unless the device is rooted, which has already happened. That smells of hypocrisy to me though.

The Nook tablet has a 7" screen and 1 GB of ram and 16 GB of internal storage and can be expanded to 32 GB. It weighs a little over 14 ounces, and uses a dual-core OMAP4 chip. It will cost $249, a little more then the Fire, and available next week. Also, previous models of the Nook will drop in price as well.

Based on this info, I can't say I would be interested in getting it. Mainly because if I want to play a game or add apps, I have to root it, which I am sure B&N says is not supported so if I had a problem, I would be out of luck. I still seem to be drawn more to the Kindle Fire then the Nook. Just because I can use the Fire how I want, right out of the box. No hacking to get it to work. Sometimes, I want to be lazy and not have to download and install junk to get it to work. But for those that do go for a Nook, let me know how you like it. As for more tablets like these, we'll be seeing more of them. There is till plenty of room out there for them, even with the iPad on the top of the list.

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