kindle

Nook won’t turn on? Try these four things.

Dave Farquhar e-readers , , ,
Nook won’t turn on? Try these four things.

I’d owned a Nook Simple Touch for less than 24 hours when I had a problem. So I learned out of necessity what to do when a Nook won’t turn on.

I found several things to try to get them working. Don’t expect the same solution to work every time. But these things are good to know.

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The Nexus 7 looks promising, if slightly flawed

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

I haven’t mentioned Google’s upcoming Nexus 7 tablet yet. If you haven’t heard about it somehow, it’s a 7-inch, quad-core tablet with 1 GB of RAM, priced at $199, and running Android 4.1. So think of it like a souped-up Kindle Fire. Read more

Don’t write Android’s obit yet

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , , , , ,

PC Magazine’s Tim Bajarin seems ready to write the obituary for Android for tablets which, to me, seems extremely premature.
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The $119 tablet

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

I broke down today. I’m going to join the tablet game. Barnes & Noble was selling refurbished Nook Color e-readers for $119, so I bought one, intending to load Cyanogenmod on it and turn it into an Android 2.3 tablet.

The resulting tablet is no Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet, but it’s $119.

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I’ve been reading up about tablets

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

I’ve been reading about the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet. And not surprisingly, the reviews are generally saying there’s not a lot of difference between the two.

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B&N heats up the midrange Android tablet market

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

This week, Barnes & Noble answered Amazon’s Kindle Fire with its comparable Nook Tablet.

Which should you buy?
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The $199 tablet market gets more crowded

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

Want a $199 tablet? Want something more open than a Kindle Fire? Want it a couple of weeks sooner? Don’t mind a slower CPU to have device portability on your books and more open access to the operating system?

Kobo is betting with its Kobo Vox tablet that the answer to at least one of those questions, for some people, is yes.

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Kindle Fire in perspective

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

Amazon’s Kindle Fire sold 95,000 units in its first day of pre-orders, which pales next to the Ipad’s 300,000 on its first day. But the Kindle Fire looks to be a slower burn. It’s sold 250,000 units now. By comparison, the Ipad sold 1 million units in its first month, which the Kindle Fire hasn’t matched yet, but it’s only been five days. Some people are reporting it’s on pace to sell 2.5 million units in its first month. Realistically, I think the number should be lower–more on that in a second. But I think the naysayers should learn really fast that this war isn’t over.
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Amazon’s new Kindles look like rising stars

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

I’m a couple of days late and for that I apologize (I’ve been on the road), but this week Amazon released its anticipated Kindle tablet and snuck out a couple of new e-readers.

The tablet–7 inches, a faster-than-rumored 1 GHz dual-core CPU, priced at $199, and dubbed the Kindle Fire–seems to be an immediate hit, with 95,000 pre-orders in its first day. Amazon is selling each tablet at about a $10 loss, which it should easily make up by selling digital content.

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Why Amazon can’t make a Kindle in the USA

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

Dan Bowman sent over this ongoing series at Forbes. I’d seen the first couple of parts of it, but didn’t realize it was still ongoing. In light of new Amazon tablet rumors, it takes on new relevance.

It’s a thought-provoking look at the state of U.S. manufacturing today, and the state of management. I don’t know if the author thinks it’s too late to reverse this decline, but presumably no. Otherwise he wouldn’t be writing it, probably.
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