[GreenMonkey]

Ok. I've had my hands on your options for extended periods.

I had my wife's hand-me-down 2nd gen 8GB Ipod touch for about a year. GREAT mp3 player, apps are good, super handy around wi-fi. Internet surfing works in a pinch. Struggled with pdfs. I jailbroke it, of course, but mainly for some customizations and such.

I wiped it and gave it to my 3yr old daughter for Christmas. She can't lose $.99 apps like she can lose $20 Leapster/Mobigo game carts. It got her to leave my wife's 32GB 3rd gen ipod touch alone.

My wife got me the NC a few weeks before Christmas. Don't let all of the rooting/updating threads in the Nook developer forum fool you. I'm still running 1.0.0 firmware on the NC. It's not worth my effort to update yet. There's a lot of stuff you can do on it, but you can also just root it and leave it alone for months like me. Unlike Apple apps that are always requiring iOS updates (annoyed me a lot on the jailbroken touch), Android apps aren't so picky about keeping the device up to date.

The NC has almost replaced my tablet convertible laptop as my websurfing device - it's so much better to do internet on than the Ipod touch was. I fire up the laptop more to run Calibre than anything else these days. And the Nook IPS screen is awesome with VERY good viewing angles.

I will also say, I don't like huge cellphone plans either. I just got the Android 2.2 LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile prepaid a few weeks ago. For $150 and $25/mo it has unlimited data, text, and 300 minutes, and I use it to tether my Nook Color once in a while. The only reason I miss my Ipod touch is for the ubiquitous dock support that is in everything. It's not QUITE as good of an mp3 player as the ipod touch, but honestly, for $150, it's a pretty fricking awesome.