It's here!

[tonyp]

NOOKLET! NOOKLET! NOOKLET!

On a whim I decided to stop at my local B&N when I left work. Sure enough they had the Tablet on display and on sale. I took the chance that since my pre-order was kind of late that it wouldn't have shipped yet. I picked it up at the store (with member discount) and screamed home to cancel the order if it hadn't shipped. I was lucky. No need to wait for a Tablet in the mail - it's here!

Not even out of the box yet.

 

[discothan]

Wooohooo! Actually I'm told that select stores made it available early!
I am waiting patiently for a valid root and port of CM7/9 to take the jump.
My NC is pretty adequate right now. But I.....CAN'T.......WAIT! DERP!

 

[tonyp]

Yeah. The B&N I stoped at is one of the largest ones in my area. Don't know if the smaller one (which is closer to my house!) has any. Right now it's being charged up. Will be giving it a try later tonight.

 

[J515OP]

Congrats tonyp. Once you get it up and running there are already ways to install non-B&N apps and different home screen launchers. Not full root but if you have some app you want to get on their right away (particularly Amazon Apps) it isn't too difficult to do that.

I'm with disothan, this thing is going to rock with CM9. The thought is so exciting but I can live with my NC for a while until then. Besides I have to wait for some impatient people to be disappointed and return their NT so I can get a refurb at a discount

 

[Spider]

A little review would be nice Tony.

 

[tonyp]

A little review would be nice Tony.

Soon, soon.

Is this the best way to do the non B&N app install?

How to sideload apps on the NOOK Tablet (Amazon Appstore, GO Launcher EX) - Liliputing

 

[J515OP]

That seems like a good guide but I haven't tried it out yet I think if you follow that you should be in good shape though.

 

[tonyp]

Initial impressions:

The first thing I did was plug it in to charge. After a couple of hours I started the setup process. This may seem unnecessary but it will be important in a moment.

I got through the wireless part just fine, but when I got to the B&N account setup I ran into a problem. I entered my email address and password (I had Show Password selected). When it tried to connect to my account it kept failing. I checked my email address and password several times: both were correct. Because my PC was in the other room I kept running back and forth to the Tablet, which was still plugged in and charging. One time when I ran back it appeared to have turned off. I pressed the power button but it would not power up. I tried several times, even tried pressing the Nook "n" on the front. Nothing. I was afraid the Tablet somehow got bricked. I pulled the mini-USB (which was still Orange) and plugged it back in. It immediately went Green and then powered up. It showed a Full Charge and then seemed to be fine. I got back to the account entry page and tried one more time. Still no good. I could only assume that because I had many non-alphanumeric characters as part of my password that it was causing a problem with the Tablet - even though I used it from my PC to logon to my account just fine.

I went over to my PC, logged on again, and changed my password. It is still a relatively strong password but I used a simpler set of non-alphanumerics (don't ask me what I did). I had to deregister and start all over again; I couldn't find a way to simply reset my B&N account info. Anyway, that worked.

Sooo. So far it looks great. I did a test read and the display look really nice. Page swipes are nice and quick. Watched a few videos from Youtube and Video Quality is very very nice. Very little glare on the glass, even under direct light. Very little shift in brightness or contrast when viewing moderately off axis, and I'm being really picky here. No color shift. Wireless is pretty good from my living room (my wireless router is two rooms away, through three walls). Video streamed with only one glitch.

Have had it on for about 1 hour with wireless and battery shows 98% remaining.

Sound is only okay, but it is clear and easy to understand

Nice build quality. Feels well constructed. That's it for now. Have to examine how to do some side loading.

Is there an app which I can use to benchmark this thing?

 

[J515OP]

Quadrant is a common one once you get side loading going. There was a report of around 2000 which isn't screaming but decent. I don't believe quadrant utilizes the dual cores. There is a lot of power in the NT but most apps aren't going to take advantage of it at this point since dual cores are still fairly new compared the majority of Android devices out there and original apps developed for single cores.

Nice mini review though.

 

[Spider]

Thanks Tony, nice to know they're real and they actually work.