What is a rooted Nook? And, why?

[janjanjan]

I've read a bunch of threads about a rooted Nook, but can't find some basic explanations of what this is exactly and why one root the Nook. Just a quick answer please. Thanks in advance.

[Care]

Basically it is where you unlock the carrier's, or in this case B&N's, android root system. This way you can add/change things on your device. A NOOKcolor can be used more like a tablet and can make use of the android apps available and a regular NOOK can have more organization and other cool features (like My Documents and B&N books being in one folder and using the coverflow).

Hope this helps.

[chas0039]

I have no use for the color version, but without rooting my regular nook, access to my more than 1500 titles would be impossible. The basic nook crashes when it has more than 1275 titles, and it has no way at all to search or sort non-B&N titles in a way that will make acess easy. With the regular nook, I would have to page forward, one page at a time, in order to get anywhere in my 150+ pages of titles. I could only sort by title, author, or most recent, and these were not reliable. Often I would totally lose my most recent titles and it would sort randomly.

With the new 1.5 update, they now have "shelves", but instead of doing what many, many other ebook manufacturers have done, they don't let you set up directories and move books where you want them. You have to move one at a time using their keyboard. Oh, and if you are using an SD card, forget it. Feature not supported.

With rooting, I can search for titles, I can sort by folder, I can see color images of covers, the newest books I just added are at the top of my "most recent" list ( gosh B&N who would have thought I might want to see the latest book I just added DUH!!!!!!)

And, I can now store over 3000 titles. And this all works with my SD card of course.

There are many other features and added apps that others find useful. but without the main features of sorting and searching, the nook would be worthless to me.

[Nyssa]

Is there away to manipulate the files if you're only using the Nook for PC app, or do you have to actually have a Nook?

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by chas0039

I have no use for the color version, but without rooting my regular nook, access to my more than 1500 titles would be impossible. The basic nook crashes when it has more than 1275 titles, and it has no way at all to search or sort non-B&N titles in a way that will make acess easy. With the regular nook, I would have to page forward, one page at a time, in order to get anywhere in my 150+ pages of titles. I could only sort by title, author, or most recent, and these were not reliable. Often I would totally lose my most recent titles and it would sort randomly.

With the new 1.5 update, they now have "shelves", but instead of doing what many, many other ebook manufacturers have done, they don't let you set up directories and move books where you want them. You have to move one at a time using their keyboard. Oh, and if you are using an SD card, forget it. Feature not supported.

With rooting, I can search for titles, I can sort by folder, I can see color images of covers, the newest books I just added are at the top of my "most recent" list ( gosh B&N who would have thought I might want to see the latest book I just added DUH!!!!!!)

And, I can now store over 3000 titles. And this all works with my SD card of course.

There are many other features and added apps that others find useful. but without the main features of sorting and searching, the nook would be worthless to me.

I've rooted my Nook, and I did it back in April when the Nook firmware didn't support searching from My Documents. The 1.5 Firmware is an improvement, and contrary to Chas' comments, the shelf does work with the SD card, but it's a royal pain to use. Also, I find that My Documents is problematic displaying my 4K books on my SDHC card (sometimes it works, and sometimes is takes forever to find all the files).

I use Calibre to manage my books, but there's no support for keyword search in the Nook My Documents. I'm actually having issues with the replacement library program in the softrooted Nook firmware, but I expect that it will be fixed sooner than the next Nook firmware release. The replacement library can search by Calibre keywords. The softrooted Nook firmware also includes a file manager, and there's also Trook, which can navigate a Calibre library.

If you don't have very many books, or if you only buy from B&N, there's probably no reason to root it. However, when you've got more than a thousand or so sideloaded ebooks, it's probably a good idea to root it, although some of the newer Nooks are more difficult to root.

[chas0039]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

The 1.5 Firmware is an improvement, and contrary to Chas' comments, the shelf does work with the SD card, but it's a royal pain to use.

I have seen numerous reports of the CD card titles on shelves disappearing after turning off and restarting, so that is what I was going by. Sorry if I missed something new. You know how things are... you never hear when something is actually working.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Is there away to manipulate the files if you're only using the Nook for PC app, or do you have to actually have a Nook?

I found both the answer & the solution.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by chas0039

I have seen numerous reports of the CD card titles on shelves disappearing after turning off and restarting, so that is what I was going by. Sorry if I missed something new. You know how things are... you never hear when something is actually working.

In my experience, the shelves work when the My Documents works. Unfortunately, most of the time I try to use My Documents, it tries to refresh for hours without doing anything, and then when I try to use it a few days later, it works. It seems like it has problems after a reboot or a connection to a PC, and when it surprises me and is populated, it continues to work as long as I don't reboot or connect to a PC.