A few months ago, I wrote an article about using my Nook Color as a tablet. That article was written when I was using the stock OS. About a week ago, I finally broke down and bought the N2A card for my Nook. Umm, why did I wait so long? Seriously.

Basically, I was using my Nook as an ebook reader, Evernote-taking, some light web browsing and word processing. And that’s basically what I’m still using it for. Only, I’ve got better apps and more options.

Let’s start at the beginning. Obligatory screen shot

Taking that would have been easier on my stock Nook Color. I had to download an app to do it on my rooted one. But, it’s okay..

No, the important thing here is not the picture of James McAvoy, though it is nice, isn’t it? See the two widgets? One is reminding me of active tasks and the other is telling me my next appointment? These are great. Yes, I use Pocket Informant for tracking my tasks, but I like having certain things right in front of me every time I look at my Nook. I tend to read in the evening and not use my iPhone as much, so I’m more likely to see things (like clean the cat box) when they are on my Nook. Besides, the little octopus is completely adorable!

Web browsing is much nicer in Dolphin Browser HD than in the stock Nook browser. It’s more responsive and seems faster.

Reading is much better. Why? Because I can buy books from anywhere. No Kindle books on a stock Nook color. But notice the Kindle app on my home screen? Yes, I can buy and read Kindle books on my Nook. I need 4 apps to cover everything, but I can live with that. Amazon has some great deals.

Including a free app every day. Sure. Most of them are terrible. But a few of them are great. Like the alternate keyboard I downloaded recently.

Note the cursor keys. Unlike my iPhone, Android has no easy way (that I’ve found) to precisely position the cursor. Those keys are making all the difference! Taking notes in Evernote is a piece of cake. And this keyboard has some predictive typing, so I can often finish a word without typing all the letters. The Nook keyboard didn’t have either cursor keys or predictive typing.

I’m not using it much for social media, although I thought I would. I like Hootsuite for iPhone better than for Android. I can’t figure out how to get more than 20 posts from a stream at a time. 20 posts isn’t nearly enough at one time. But I am using it for reading blogs. The Google Reader app is nice. And the Gmail app is much better than the Nook email app, which had to re-download every email every time you launched it. What a waste!

I’m still trying to find a good word processing option. I had QuickOffice on the stock OS, but it doesn’t work right on the rooted OS. I’m test driving a text editor, which may do everything I need.

The final result? I’m doing more with my Nook than I ever did. Good for me. Bad for my battery. Now I need to charge it every day. Not because the drain is worse but because I’m just using it more.

A small price to pay.

When I bought my Nook Color several months ago, I intended to root it and turn it into a full Android tablet. However, my first (and only) attempt to root it did not turn out so well. Then the Barnes and Noble app store opened up, my Holy Grail app, Evernote, appeared, and I decided maybe I could get along with just the stock OS.

For the last week or so, I’ve been deliberately treating my Nook Color as a tablet to see how it functions, and overall, I’m going to say it’s certainly no iPad, but it’s meeting most of my needs.

Keep in mind that most people use a tablet for the following:

1. Web browsing
2. Email
3. Social media
4. Video
5. Music
6. Games
7. Light word processing and document management
8. E-books

I’ll discuss and rate the Nook Color in each of those areas.

1. Web browsing (4/5)

The Nook Color has a pretty good browser. Pages load quickly over WiFi (the Nook Color has no 3G option), and they look good on the 7″ screen. The browser supports flash, and I haven’t spent much time watching streaming video, but what I have watched rendered just fine.

You can switch between mobile view and desktop view, though most of the time I use mobile view. I only give it 4 stars because you do have to zoom in on most pages to really read them, and the touchscreen is, well, touchy, so I’ve hit my fair share of wrong links. I rarely have that problem on my iPhone even though the screen is much smaller.

2. Email (3/5)

I give it 3 stars only because of the browser and webmail. The included email app is pretty awful, but I do use it. It’s awful because it hangs on “loading messages” frequently, and it doesn’t cache any messages on the device. Each time you load the app, you have to load all the emails, even ones you’ve previously looked at.

Webmail is probably the better way to view email on the Nook Color. When I’m on the go, I just use my iPhone, which has a much better email app.

3. Social Media (2/5)

Again, it’s only that good because of the browser. There’s not yet a decent Twitter or Facebook app. Seesmic is available, but it seems to kill battery life. I think it’s constantly trying to check for new messages, even when it’s not connected, and I couldn’t find an option to toggle that on or off. Also, clicking on a link doesn’t open the web browser. The main reason I wanted to use the Nook Color for social media was for the bigger screen to read links.

If the official Twitter and Facebook apps show up or Seesmic fixes the above problems, I’ll reconsider my rating.

4. Video (4/5)

I converted Master and Commander to a mobile format and watched on the plane home from Dallas a couple of weeks ago. Other than some odd pixellation (that could have been from the conversion), it worked great and kept me quite entertained.

5. Music (no rating)

I just use my iPhone for music, so I haven’t tested the feature.

6. Games (2/5)

The device should work fine for games, but there are very few available right now. You can get Angry Birds and some puzzle games, but that’s about it. Until there’s a better selection, if you must have games, get an iPhone or iPad.

7. Light word processing and document management (4/5)

This is what I use it for the most (well other than for e-books), and with Evernote and Quick Office, it’s been great. Quick Office loads from either SD card or my Dropbox folder, and it’s a decent tablet word processor. Cursor movement isn’t as easy as on my iPhone, which is why I’m only giving the Nook Color 4 stars, but I’ve been making it work. I’m also getting faster with the soft keyboard. I don’t think I’ll ever achieve iPhone speed, but I’m getting there.

Evernote just works great, and I’m now using it for all my meeting notes.

8. E-reading (5/5)

Not surprisingly, it’s pretty darned good at that. I’ve used a number different e-book readers, and the Nook Color is my favorite so far. I’m not going to say much more about it because there are tons of reviews of the Nook Color as ereader out there, but I figured it would look odd if I didn’t at least mention it.

Overall, the Nook Color running the stock OS is very usable as a tablet. I’m missing some features (like decent email and social media apps) that I could get if I rooted it, but I can use my phone for those functions. Mostly I want it for documents, reading, light web browsing and the occasional movie. It does those things very well, and I’m confident in the coming months that there will be apps to address its glaring flaws.

Plus I’ve heard rumors that Netflix is coming to the Nook Color. Now that would be amazing!

I haven’t done a gadget post in forever, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with my new Nook Color. This post piggy backs off my last post about knowing what your customer wants. (Which is totally NOT a lame excuse to write about my new gadget. Nope.)

Anyway, I’d been looking for a way to play around with Android for a while, but I didn’t want to buy a new phone, and the Android tablets were too expensive. Then I read that the Nook Color was basically an Android tablet disguised as an ereader. I haven’t had a dedicated ereader in a couple of years, so I decided to give it a try. I’d read about “rooting” it to make it a true tablet, and I probably will do it someday. But it wasn’t something I wanted to tackle right away.

Let me digress for a moment to talk about the customer service at Barnes and Noble. I’d window shopped ereaders at Best Buy and Borders and discovered in both places that I knew more about the products than did the sales people. So I assumed the folks at Barnes and Noble would be equally clueless. Not so! I’ve talked to three or four guys at the Nook counter, and, with one exception, they knew their stuff and gave me ideas. In fact, one salesperson told me about the upcoming update that would make the Nook even more tablet-like. Good job, Barnes and Noble. The Amazon Kindle is their biggest competitor in the ereader space. Yes, you can buy a Kindle now in certain stores. But if the salespeople don’t have a clue, where’s the advantage? Barnes and Noble devotes a lot of space to the Nook display, and with good people showing them off, they are giving good service to their customers.

So I decided to wait a little longer on the rooting and got the new update on Monday. So far I am liking the device, and the new update. Now we can buy apps. Granted the selection is limited right now, but I expect that to change.

Adding more tablet functionality was a very good move by Barnes and Noble. There’s a need for an inexpensive Android tablet, and the Nook does it quite well. I don’t want to be locked into another contract, and all the contract-free Android tablets are either too expensive or crappy quality. The Nook, however, works well, is WiFi only (so no contract) and is only $249. By upgrading so users can buy apps, Barnes and Noble has responded to a need. Face it. Most people aren’t going to be power users. They will want a few apps and a cheap device. The Nook will do it. Smart Barnes and Noble. Fill that niche and attract more NookBook buyers.

It’s a good reading device. The backlit is very bright, so I keep it turned all the way down most of the time, which is good for battery life. I get between 2 and 3 days between charges, unless I’m camping. Then I get about 1 1/2 to 2 days. I do LOTS of reading while camping.

It’s okay, but not great outdoors. You need to be in the shade to read the screen comfortably. My husband’s old Sony 505 (with E-Ink) totally wins there.

The web browser is pretty good. The only trouble is the responsiveness of the screen. It’s much easier to tap links on my iPhone. With the Nook, half the time I tap the wrong link unless I zoom in to make the text very large.

The new email app works fine for me. I’ve only got my gmail coming in now, but it looks nice, and responding is easy.

My favorite app so far is Fliq Notes. Silly that the darn thing didn’t come with a native note app. It’s not a great app, but I can create and email notes, which was all I wanted.

It’s not going to replace my iPhone for productivity. I’m still mostly using it as a reader, but I like it for that. And I like that I have some light tablet functionality for when I want/need it. Can’t beat the price. $249 for a reader/tablet combo? Works for me.

There are a lot of books being written about vampires today. Heck, I’m writing them myself. The vampire has moved from a creature that inspires fear and horror to something that inspires lust and now, most of the time, love.

Four well-known horror/thriller authors, J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, F. Paul Wilson, and Jeff Strand, have reversed that trend with Draculas, which will be released as a Kindle exclusive tomorrow.

Buy it.

If you don’t own a Kindle, not a problem. You have a computer or smartphone (or you wouldn’t be reading this). There’s a Kindle app for you.

Why buy Draculas? What makes it worth adding to your busy schedule? Because it’s a darn fun book. It’s not for the squeamish or faint of heart. But if you want a rollicking, scare-the-pants-off-you good time, it’s for you.

I read Draculas on a camping trip. Outside. At night. The only light from a flickering campfire. And, oh yeah, it works.

The action starts immediately. These guys don’t waste time with lengthy exposition. They jump right in. And it never lets up. The entire book takes place in less than 12 hours, and, as the authors discuss in the included interview, that was part of the goal. Fast. Short period of time. High intensity.

They deliver.

There’s a large cast of characters, but you won’t have trouble keeping them straight. Each of them has a distinctive hook. I was particularly fond of Adam, the preacher, and Benny the Clown. For some reason, I envisioned Nathan Fillion as Adam. If you guys do this as a movie (and you should), keep that in mind, okay? Benny’s appearance in the story is so well-described, it’ll have you in stitches and will stay with you a long time. He’s got, in my opinion, the best hook. You always know when he’s coming into a scene.

But there’s lots more to this book than a great story. When you get to the explosive end, you’ll find yourself only half-way through the book. By releasing on Kindle, they were able to add DVD-like extras. There’s sample works by the authors, a couple of interviews, deleted scenes and more.

If you are a writer, you’ll be fascinated by the complete series of emails exchanged by the authors as they were writing it. Not to be missed for the insight into the writing and co-authoring process.

It’s only $2.99, less than a Venti Starbucks coffee. It’ll keep you awake better than the coffee too.

So what are you waiting for? Go buy it. Or the draculas might get you.

If you want more about the book, check out my interview with the authors of Draculas.