Why you should root the NOOK Color to run Honeycomb

The NOOK Color is a $250

e-reader device

. It's got a capacitive touch screen that makes it a good alternative to some other less expensive Android tablets with imprecise and non-multi-touch resistive touch screens.

The software that runs the unmodified NOOK Color is based on Android and works quite well for an e-reader. It includes a rudimentary web browser and a few games and simple apps, but its primary function is as an e-reader. If you want to make the NOOK Color do more, it's fairly easy to do as we'll show you in this series.

XDA Developers user Deeper-blue has created a simple solution to

get Honeycomb running on your NOOK Color

. Perhaps the best part about this solution is that it doesn't require that you permanently

modify your NOOK

. The

Honeycomb Android 3.0 OS

runs from the microSD card, so if you remove the card you remove the hack and the NOOK is back to running its default software.

If you already own a NOOK Color, then the cost of this hack is about $50 for the microSD card. Otherwise you'll need to shell out $250 for the NOOK Color itself. Also, while you can do this hack with a 4GB card, we recommend that you use card that holds at least 8GB if you intend to put the Android Market on the device and in turn download apps. Here's a list of what you'll need:

1 NOOK Color - $250
1 microSD Card - Class 4 or better, 4GB or greater (8GB+ recommended) - ~$50
deeper-blue's nookhoney04.img, 190MB - Free
1 Windows or Mac computer
1 microSD card reader or an SD card reader and microSD card adapter