[MusingCoyote]

Thanks for the quick answer Firefox

I'm a fairly competent computer person(not quite enough to consider myself a techie, but close enough), but I rarely get into things like rooting, for fear I'll break something important and/or unfixable, and for some reason, things like this tend to just...not work for me...^^;
Unfortunately, I like my computers, and my poor college-student self can't replace them if I should do something careless
However, what I'm seeing for the nook may be a bit too tempting for me to pass up, and I'm seriously considering this.
I just can't seem to find definitive answers to a few things I'm worried about:

Will the UI change at all if I root the nook? I like the nook UI, and I still want it to be primarily a ereader, just with a few extra things, most importantly a text editor-type app of some sort.

What can go wrong? seriously, I'd like to know if this will screw up the hardware at all, somehow

I'd also like to know if, should something serious go wrong software-wise, making it impossible to perform a factory reset on the device itself, would it be possible to format the ereader from my computer, and reinstall the firmware manually?

if any of these questions have obvious answers, I'm sorry ^^; I'm not an idiot, I swear, just in a state of perpetual sleep deprivation