Barnes & Noble Nook Now Free — Sort Of - renfroeshunt1950

Does the eReader yearn to be free? For some time now, pundits sustain predicted a select group of eReaders and tablets would shortly get over loss-drawing card specials: tech gadgets provided at little or no more up-front cost to consumers, who in turn moldiness leverage a digital media subscription of approximately assort.

Well, that glorious solar day has arrived. Barnes & Noble is offering its Nook Simple Equal eReader, which normally sells for $99, for free.

The catch: You must buy a one-year Corner (member) subscription to The Newfound York Times at $20 a month. Or els, you can buzz off a Nook Color for $99 — a one C bucks off retail — with a annual Times subscription.

Since the regular price of the Nook newspaper edition of The New York Multiplication is $20 per calendar month, you really are getting a discharged Corner taboo of the deal. You'll have to ponder, however, whether the Nook edition is worth $240 per year, peculiarly when NYT articles are readily available online gratis.

The B&adenosine monophosphate;N bundle costs to a lesser degree The Multiplication' All Member Access pass, which provides untrammelled access to NYTimes.com from most mobile devices, including Blackberry bush, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, and Android smartphones, for $424 per year.

The Member Access code deal includes get at to the NYTimes apps for the Orchard apple tree iPad and the Chrome World Wide Web Store, likewise as to Times Reader 2.0.

Would you buy an annual subscription to a newsprint or magazine for a "free" tablet? The publishing manufacture is hoping (OK, praying with fingers interbred) that you'll say "yes." Print is struggling, and the country's news publishers desperately need to happen a new business enterprise model before it's too late.

Impinging Jeff Bertolucci at Today@PCWorld, Twitter (@jbertolucci) or jbertolucci.blogspot.com, and follow Nowadays@PCWorld connected Twitter, too.