Engadget reports that Barnes & Noble is making a change to the partitioning on its Nook Color tablet. Previously, sideloaded content such as music and movies could be stored in all 5 gigabytes of internal storage, but in order to make sure that the tablet has plenty of room for content purchased from B&N, new Nook Colors will only have 1 gig available for external content. Newly-restricted models can be recognized by a blue dot on the box.
Of course, the Nook Color will still have a microSD card slot, which can add up to 32 gigabytes of storage for external content. And undoubtedly people who jailbreak to add full Android functionality won’t even notice the restriction. Still, people who like having the freedom to decide where the content on their devices come from, it will probably be at least a little annoying.
(Found via Gadgetell.)
With the old partitioning there was only about 900MB available for apps. Because the enhanced ebook apps are often larger than 100MB people were running out of application space.
With the new partitioning there is 4GB more available to store apps (and B&N ebooks).
1GB of external contect is enough for more than 1000 regular ePub books, and for $20 you can add a 16GB sd card.
This makes me glad I just opted for a Kindle 3 rather than a Nook. I get more than enough nannying by Apple with my iPhone. I don’t want my ereader to suffer the same affliction.
If June sees Apple stripping iPhone and iPads of all commercial ereader apps (including the Kindle app) if they do not give Apple all their wholesale-to-retail markup, Apple’s once-open devices will have become as closed as the Kindle for ebook readers. And when Amazon adds library book checkouts and ePub reading, as they’ve promised, the Kindle will have become more open than the iPad.
Six months ago, I wouldn’t have believed that was possible.
“And when Amazon adds… ePub reading, as they’ve promised”
News to me. Google shows nothing that I can see other than a flimsy rumor from a somewhat dicey site.
@Michael:
4Gb micro-SD, Kingston, Class 4: £5 UK.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s a significant reason to avoid the Nook. Given that price, I’m glad they’re making sure users don’t hit the 1Gb limit on glossy e-magazines or games or whatever.
Personally I’d rather have a reader with a memory card slot — it’s a more robust and flexible system, even if it comes at the cost of an extra moving part.