They've got the brand names of popular black and white e-readers. But the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are, as the latter's name implies, basically miniature tablets like the iPad. (The Nook Color is also; it's a cheaper version of the Nook Tablet.)
They're like the iPad in that they have color, glass multitouch screens, and reasonably powerful hardware inside. They're not as big or as powerful as the iPad, but they're only about half the size and half the cost. And that hardware doesn't go to waste, either. Here's what you can do with them besides read (and buy) e-books:
Web Browsing
Full-sized websites look a bit cramped on the 7-inch screens, and the text can be a bit tiny. You can double-tap to zoom in, though, and the browser will reflow the text to make it fit the screen width once it's a reasonable size. And on mobile sites, the experience is even better, as the buttons that were designed for smartphone users are especially easy to hit.
The Nook browser requires you to scroll to the top to bookmark a page or navigate it, but has most of the features that you would expect from a web browser.
Music
A Kindle or Nook can provide a soundtrack for reading books, or they can serve as portable music players when carried in a handbag. The built-in music apps are serviceable, and apps for Pandora, Grooveshark, and other streaming music services are available when you have Wi-Fi access. The Nook can sync music to its built-in memory or microSD card, and the Kindle can sync with your Amazon Cloud Drive account and buy new songs from Amazon's MP3 store.
Games and Apps
Neither the Nook nor the Kindle has the tens of thousands of tablet apps available for the iPad. And while they run Google's open-source Android operating system "under the hood", neither one has access to the Android Market, either.
Amazon has an "Appstore," though, and Barnes and Noble has its own selection of apps for the Nook. The Nook's catalog is considerably weaker, but both have a good-sized assortment of "name brand" games and apps, including Evernote, Netflix and Angry Birds.
If you rely on a particular tablet app, you may not be able to find it in either store. There's often a web version of today's popular apps, though, which you can access online through a web browser while you're on Wi-Fi.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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