On my trip up to New York a few weeks ago, I spotted PanDigital's 9 inch, multimedia Novel EReader, which retails for 150$. Of course, I looked at the flashier Android tablets, including my friends snazzy Asus Transformer. But my needs are simple and I really don't believe in spending for more than I need and all I wanted really was an upgrade to my phone for reading the news and weather in bed.
The Novel is a bit of a humble box, natively supporting only up to Android OS 2.0, on board wireless and an internal storage capacity of 2gigs. However it's got a 800mhz processor, so I don't see why it couldn't be successfully rooted up to Froyo or higher. The screen resolution is only 800x400, but that's more than adequate for reading the news, ebooks, picture viewing, non HD movie watching and playing mp3s. It also sports a full sized SD card reader, accepting cards up to 32gig. It also has an anti glare screen built in to boot. For the money, it's one hell of a portable media device, beating out most portable devices in terms of features, if you can overlook the low resolution.
The only problem with the Novel is that it ships with a locked down OS that gives you the ability to run Android apps, but no access to the Android market. Instead, you have to download the SlideMe.org's market app, which contains a hodge podge of free, cheap and third party apps.
Fortunately, there exists a large user's base and it's possible to root, or swap over the OS to another one that has the built in market functionality. If you follow this link here, you'll find a set of instructions and a link to an OS that you can load without any real technical expertise. Make you sure that once loaded, you go into the app settings and delete the Android market update, as it causes a conflict that will give you an error every time you use the market.
Having the proper and working apps from the Android market is an obvious advantage. One tip I will offer is to skip the widgets and stick to the apps. Most of them are meant for the newer Android OSes and tend to crash on the Novel. All of the apps I've tried work with no problem. Be sure and check out the WiFi and Brightness toggle apps! They come in real handy since the OS doesn't have controls for them.
Browse Pandigital's Novel on Amazon.com
