Nook Color with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread/CM7) & Bluetooth (Update)

UPDATE:  my enthusiasm for bluetooth keyboard input made me temporarily forget to test out the onscreen keyboard.  while using it the last couple days, it has seemed a little buggy.  sometimes when you press one key it will register as another key, or it will register as though you pressed the key multiple times.  it looks like there have been several updates to CM7 since i installed though, so hopefully one of those fixed this issue

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Like a fine wine, the Nook Color just keeps getting better as time goes on.

My last post gave you 3 options for upgrading your Nook from its original Andoroid 2.1 operating system to either Android 2.2 (FroYo), Android 2.3 (Gingerbread/CM7), Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).

You can install any of these updates to run off either…
1.  a microSD card
–pro: the more conservative option because it leaves your Nook’s internal software alone.  You just boot off the sd card, so that if you don’t like the new operating system, you just take out the sd card and you are back to what you had originally.
–con: you have to have a high speed microSD card (~class 10 speed), which are $$$.  I tried using a class 4 & a class 6 card and things ran with a lot of lag.  (*note:  FroYo ran ok, but Gingerbread and Honeycomb were unusably slow.  Android Market didn’t run well on any of them)

2.  the Nook Color’s internal memory
–con: the more aggressive option b/c it wipes out your Nook’s internal software
–pro: this runs FAST.  No lag.  Android Market worked fine

So, which upgrade am I currently using?  (2.2 vs. 2.3 vs. 3.0?).

After giving each one a test drive booting off the microSD and experiencing annoying lags, I decided to man up and install the upgrade directly to the Nook internal memory.

I am currently sticking with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread/CM7) for the following reasons…
-it is fast & very responsive
–bluetooth (wireless keyboards work great;  headsets will pair with the NC, but I can’t find any applications that work with them yet)
–Android Market works well
–web browsing is significantly faster
–Flash video sites work (Naruto & One Piece episodes played great through the native browser using the Flash 2.2 plugin;  *note:  Hulu & Netflix don’t work natively in the browser…we’re still waiting on Android apps for those)
–Gmail contacts sync now (this is true of 2.2, 2.3 and 3.0)
–Nook will charge by plugging into my computer’s USB (I think that this may have worked before, but the battery indicator never used to say charging before…in gingerbread, it does.)
–holding down the “n” home key brings up a list of recently used apps (nice for switching between apps)
–text input/selection is improved (there are handles that come up when you are selecting text for copying/pasting)

-I’m sure there’s more features to mention, but just wanted to post my current findings in case you were looking to take the plunge and needed a little more information.  So far I’m loving Gingerbread/CM7 on the Nook Color and would definitely recommend it if you need a weekend project.  =)

*note:  there are nightly builds being released all the time.  At  the time of this posting I used cm_encore_full-34.zip from the nightly build page

-did I mention you can use a bluetooth keyboard????  So awesome.