I am not an early adopter. I like to wait for technology to mature a generation or two before I submit to inevitability. It isn’t a long process, unless you’re one of those people who anticipates every new Apple release like its Christmas morning, 19-whenever-you-were-12. We already have iPhone 4, can iPad 2 be far behind? No. As soon as they stick a USB port on an iPad, I’ll pick one up. But that’s not why you called.
Last year, when Barnes & Noble announced their new eBook reader, the Nook, I was immediately interested. This did not feel like early adoption to me. The Kindle has been floating around for years, but I never felt any great need to have one. I know this is silly, particularly considering the recent tax bill the state of Texas sent them, but Amazon still feels like an abstract to me, an intangible. Amazon, as a concept, feels flimsy. I hooked onto the Nook because I liked that I could buy a book reader, and the books to read on it, from an honest to James Joyce bookstore. I’ve taken a lot of joy from bookstores over the years, and from Barnes and Noble in particular. I don’t mind showing a little loyalty to a retailer, even a big one, that I think has treated me well.
My wife got me a Nook for Christmas… well, I didn’t get it until nearly Martin Luther King Day, but I opened the “handsomely printed” IOU from Barnes & Noble on Christmas morning. Upon seeing it, I felt both excitement and trepidation. The rumors about an Apple tablet started to spread between the time I mentioned to my wife that I might like a Nook and the time I actually got one. No one knew what it was yet, no one I knew anyway, but the buzz was that it would be market changing. For once, the buzz was right.
This morning, not nine months after I first powered on my Nook, I opened up my email to find an advertisement for the new Nook color, effectively making my Nook an avocado colored refrigerator. 
Nook color is a Nook with a full color touch screen. No more of that silly electronic paper that was going to change the world. Eyestrain be damned, here’s the Barnes & Noble iPad lite. It is described in the ad as “The Ultimate Reading Experience.”
How much time has passed, do you imagine, since the last time someone invented a new, more efficient spoke for the wagon wheel? I imagine it will be about that long before I get another software update for my NINE MONTH OLD Nook.
How much is an iPad?
Jack Bronn was born in Illinois, raised in Florida, misses his home in New Hampshire, dreams of living in New York, and resides with his wife and son in North Carolina. He writes.