Original Nook Color gets price drop, new features to compete with Kindle Fire
Although the leak of Barnes & Noble's new Nook Color Two has been getting a lot of attention lately, the official announcement on Monday will bring the vastly popular original some nice updates as well.
Presumably to compete with the already popular Amazon Kindle Fire, the original Color has gotten a price drop to the same $199 price. This makes it a pretty good deal, because as far as specifications only the Fire's processor ups the Nook. The Nook also has a great hacking community, dedicated to using the tablet to its full potential. Depending on how Amazon handles tweakers, the Fire will be able to build a community too, but for now the Nook Color is the developer favorite.
The Nook Color is also getting a number of multimedia features, including Hulu Plus, Grooveshark and Pandora. They have also expanded their application and magazine catalogue, which will make the ecosystem more competitive with the Fire. Still, with all of Amazon's content behind it, the Fire still wins in the content department.
Even though better hardware is coming out soon, it is nice that Barnes & Noble is still supporting and even upgrading their legacy device. (Something that doesn't happen to many other Android devices.) It will be interesting to see on Monday how their new Nook Color tablet stacks up against the competition, but for now the original is still a good value tablet.
[The Verge]
