Bijan Sabet

The ideal tablet form factor

My brother, @aminsabet, came over last night and showed me something quite cool.

He rooted the Nook Color and now has full Android running on it. It’s a full fledged Android tablet. With a 7” screen it’s considerably smaller than the iPad. And it’s much cheaper than the iPad. I believe the Nook Color is $250.

I played around with it and it is very cool.

But it just had too many compromises for me. It doesnt have my favorite iPad apps (ie twitter for iPad, Writer, Instapaper, Netflix, Boxee for iPad etc). It also doesn’t have built in 3G although I realize many people can get by just fine with wifi only and just tether to their mobile phone as needed

But the big surprise for me is that I didn’t care for the form factor.

I thought I would be drawn to the lighter, smaller tablet. Many folks have told me that they think 7” is the right size for a tablet.

That’s not true for me. I’m completely hooked on the iPad form factor. It’s better for consuming content and it’s much easier to create content as well.

Looking forward to seeing what apple has up their sleeves for ipad2. I just hope they don’t mess without the screen size.