Wall Street Journal writer Brett Arends bought a $200 Nook Color, jailbroke it in 20 minutes and found himself with a functioning tablet computer.
Arends readily admits his workaround – though it worked perfectly – isn’t the same thing as having an iPad.
He does crunch the numbers and figures the $200 he saves now, if invested, will give him about an extra $1,000 by the time he retires.
The resulting pocket PC is about half the size of an iPad, weighs about 30% less than the current gen Apple device and runs on WiFi, but not 3G and has about eight hours of battery life.
After following the Android root found on Ars Tecnica, Arends soon found himself with a cheap computer that he could use to write emails, tweet and play Angry Birds.
Arends concludes that it is short-sighted of Barnes & Noble to market a locked-down device just to keep people from buying competing Amazon products – but do you think there’s a market for Nooks as more than e-readers?
Via WSJ
