I have a Nook Color and I have had loads of fun modding it. From basic rooting to Froyo, CM7, and Honeycomb, there are several options available now for those wanting to transform it from a tablet-esque eReader into a $250 entry level Android tablet. These operations range from simple to somewhat advanced, so I understand that some people are going to be a little intimidated by the prospect of hacking an expensive device. Naturally some might rather ask a more experienced tinkerer to do the job for them, and not risk messing something up. I get that. However, do I think paying upwards of $80 for an SD card that runs the port of the Honeycomb SDK preview is a wise decision? Wow - no way. That is exactly what is happening every day on eBay.

People have the right to buy or sell whatever they want (subject to their respective locales' laws), but the fact that people are paying this much for a pre-loaded SD card baffles me. See, the nice thing about the internet is that there are instructions for things like this that pretty much anyone with a few minutes of time and the ability to read can follow.

In fact, since I'm such a nice guy, I am going to lay out the instructions for those on PCs to make your very own Honeycomb-running SD card for the Nook right here and right now:

  1. Download nookhoney04.img.zip
  2. Unzip the image onto your computer using WinRAR
  3. Get an SD card, at least 4GB. Using an SD card reader, insert it into your computer.
  4. download WinImage, and under 'Disk' choose "Restore Virtual Image to Physical Drive." Choose your SD card reader's drive. Change the files shown at the bottom to "all files" and select the file.

You now have an SD card that will boot into Honeycomb on your Nook Color. You know, one of those $80 Honeycomb for NC SD cards.

Of course this four-step tutorial doesn't include Mac instructions or directions for installing the market and Google apps, but a quick search should give you what you need (at first glance I stumbled upon this site which seems to give solid instructions for all of this).

If you want to get taken to the cleaners, who am I to stop you? Getting bamboozled is your right and I respect your decision to exercise that freedom. My only humble request is that you please research at least a little bit first to see if those four steps above are worth paying $80 to have somebody else do.

Thank you - we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.