Potential New Nook Owner -- A few questions

[Darth VeX]

Chances are, I'm going to be getting a Nook Color or Nook Tablet for Christmas or soon after. But I have a few questions about some things, and I'm hoping you Nook Geniuses can help me out with them:

1) My mother has had a nook now for over a year, and has built up quite an impressive library of books, and has already offered to let me simply add my new Nook to her account so I can have access to her library, which is what my sister did with her new Nook about six months ago. When my sister wants to buy a book she simply buys it on my mother's account and then pays her back. But I tend to have a much wider range of books that I read. They both read murder mysteries, some mainstream fiction, and some Christian non-fiction. All of which I also read. But I also tend to read popular teen fiction (usually the stuff that's about to be made into movies, ie "The Hunger Games", "Harry Potter", etc) and Science Fiction, which neither of them really read.

So my question is ... can my Nook be associated with both my mother's account AND my own? Like an iPod can?


2) I'm probably going to use my Nook as a portable video player somewhat. I already have TONS of movies for my iPod Touch (not DRM) which are H.264 853x480 so ... according to the FAQs, they should play fine on both the Color or the Tablet.

My question is ... since both devices reserve ALL BUT 1GB of their storage space for "Barnes & Noble Content", will I have to "side-load" pretty much all my videos on a MicroSD card? Is there a way around the "reserve storage space" issue without a full OS hack?


3) I've read in a few places that the Nook Color doesn't charge properly if you use a DIFFERENT USB cable than the one it comes with. I can understand it not charging as fast or nearly at all from a PC/Notebook USB port ... but does the cable itself really make a huge difference?!? Is the same true of the new Nook Tablet?


Thanks in Advance for the answers!

[Darth VeX]

So ... after not getting an answer here ... I've searched and scoured the interwebs and found some of the answers myself:

1) Nope. Unlike the ingenious methods of iTunes and Apple, you can't have B&N content from multiple accounts on a single B&N device.

2) Not after the most recent update. B&N's most recent update (1.4.1) has blocked a lot of the sideloading capabilities that certain apps were allowing.

3) Still don't know the answer to this one.

[wellread]

Hey...
1. You are correct, however you could unregister and reregister to your own account whenever you wanted access to the books only you like...
2. Yup, all but 1gb is partitioned off...
3. I have used a different usb cable that worked ok, but I don't use my computer...use the a/c adapter with the cable.
4. Which you didn't address....WHY would you want to load video to the hard drive???

[MikFinkel]

My question is ... since both devices reserve ALL BUT 1GB of their storage space for "Barnes & Noble Content", will I have to "side-load" pretty much all my videos on a MicroSD card? Is there a way around the "reserve storage space" issue without a full OS hack?

I have hacked and semi hacked and done whatever to my nookcolor.
My advise would be that instead of hacking would be to buy the Vizio VTAB1008 the 8" Vizio tablet.
It is an awesome machine and unlike the NC and NT you can actually hear the speakers and has decent sound quality and a full Google app store.

[MikFinkel]

the vizio will also take a 32 gb sd card.

[Darekun]

3) I've read in a few places that the Nook Color doesn't charge properly if you use a DIFFERENT USB cable than the one it comes with. I can understand it not charging as fast or nearly at all from a PC/Notebook USB port ... but does the cable itself really make a huge difference?!? Is the same true of the new Nook Tablet?

The cable that comes with a Nook Color is not normal — it has a bunch of extra wires in it, for power. I've charged my Nook through my computer, and it charges about like my phone… which is seriously inferior to how fast it charges on the cable and adapter that came with it. I would assume a Nook Tablet is similar.

(BTW, I have all my large media on a MicroSD card, and it works great — autodetects in the Music app and such.)