O'Reilly NOOK, Manual

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ChaPTer 17
NOTE
To check which software version you have, press the NOOK button, tap Settings
➝
Device
Info
➝
About Your NOOK, and on the screen that appears, look in the “Software version” section. That
tells you what version of the NOOK software you have.
Never underestimate the creativity of tinkerers who love mucking around with
hardware and software, though, because by early in 2012, they had come up
with several different ways to root the NOOK Color and the NOOK Tablet.
This book doesn’t cover in precise detail how to root the NOOK’s built-in flash
memory. On the Internet, many people have posted ways to root the NOOK’s
built-in flash memory; however, the instructions are not always clearly explained
and don’t always work. In addition, they require that you download software
and files online, and by the time you read this, those files many no longer exist
(and downloading software from a source you don’t know is always risky). And
every time the NOOK software is updated, the hackers have to start over and
find new ways to root it. You can search the Web for
NOOK Tablet rooting and
see what comes up, but you’re taking your chances.
Instead, this chapter focuses on the simpler and safer way of rooting your NOOK
Color or NOOK Tablet—using a microSD card. It also shows you how to get
started with the Android Market, which is presumably the reason you wanted
to root your NOOK in the first place. If you insist on trying to root the NOOK’s
built-in flash memory, the end of the chapter gives the general steps for rooting
(and unrooting) your NOOK via this method.
Rooting Your NOOK Temporarily
with a MicroSD Card
As explained at the beginning of this chapter, this method doesn’t touch the
NOOK’s built-in flash memory. Instead, you boot into the Android operating sys-
tem from a microSD card and run the Android operating from there. When you
want to run the NOOK as you would normally, turn the NOOK off, take out the
card, and then turn it on again, and you’re running the normal NOOK software,
with no muss and no fuss.
NOTE
Your NOOK runs more slowly using this method than if you root the NOOK’s built-in software.