Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez
I have a Nook Color that I rooted into a Nook Tablet. I succeeded, but it was time consuming and painful. So, I'd prefer not to have to root again...
Anyhow, the Nook has been damaged so I'm looking for a new tablet.
I"ve read a couple topics in here. This WON'T be my only machine, or the one I have to do my surfing or editing, or whatever on. I have a dual-30" desktop and a 17" laptop for all that stuff. This is for portability, reading, and convenience.
I'd like to be able to load whatever I want on it... Preferably natively - not side-loading and kludging it. Coolreader, Moonreader, Aldiko, Kindle reader, etc. As well as whatever apps I need - whether it's an ephemeris or Angry Birds, or whatever I'm looking for.
I'll be using it for reading, and some music and/or Internet radio. So far, I haven't been watching movies on the Nook.
I'd LIKE a 10" tablet, but I'm curious whether the advantage of more screen space outweighs the extra weight and clumsiness. Also, if I"m reading on a 10", do I just get a lot more lines if in portrait at the same font size, or do I just get bitter type and need to go to landscape mode with two pages? And how's the quality of I go to 2 pages?
I'm not an Apple fan, so not much interested in the iPad. And I'm hopeless with my wife's Blackberry, so if their tablets are like their phones I'll stay away from those. I like the Nook HD+ or equivalent Fire, but again, I'm back to rooting.
So, do I stay at 7" or go to 10"? Do I go for a Nexus or is there some better, equally cost effective option? Is the Nook HD or HD+ or equivalent Kindle the best bang for the buck or is the Nexus better for what I do? Is there some other option I haven't considered yet?
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As an example: You don't have to root Kindle Fire HD, to get the apps onto it.
You just can sideload the apps without need to root.
I've briefly tested nook and Kobo for example on Kindle Fire HD.
So, to answer your first question: Lot can be done on most tablets without root.
7" or 10" is way more difficult to answer.
Personally, I've started with "the big ones": Kindle DX, iRex 1000. Than iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v and so on.
But in the meantime I've switched to the smaller ones.
Simple explanation: A few years ago, when in a different job, I've read lots of technical and legal documents. Those PDFs had been DIN A4 and had lots of diagrams, formulas and other complicated formatting issues. I couldn't read those documents adequately on readers/tablets significantly smaller than the original paper format (DIN A4).
But now, I don't need these kinds of documents anymore.
The stuff I'm reading now is of way simpler structure. So 6" or 7" is absolutely okay.
I'm still using my Kindle DX, but way less often then 2 years ago.
So: What kind of documents do you read? I guess, that's the key question re. display size.
Re. brands:
In my opinion, there's not much of a difference between Kindle Fire HD, nook HD, Nexus 7 and Galaxy Tab 2 for example. If you shop for bargain tablets, you get what you pay for. Personally, I prefer Kindle HD and Nexus 7 over the others. nook HD is a bit of a disappointment re. build quality. On the other hand it has the best display...
I'm not a Samsung fan, hate their permanent scanning of the SD cards for new media content. And App2SD doesn't work as intended on Galaxy Note.
Still: All 4 of them are close to each other.
There might be an alternative:
Personally, I love BlackBerry PlayBook.
In my opinion, it looks and feels way more "valuable" than the "bargain tablets".
I love the display and I'M fine with the processor and performance over all. You easily can sideload Android apps onto it, again without any hacking. The Android emulator is an official implementation of BlackBerry and performs surprisingly well. So you can read Kindle, Kobo, nook, Zinio and others on PlayBook. And it may be even cheaper than the others...And the OS is still phantastic...