I had a call last week where the customer asked me to help them root their Nook Color. We used the instructions found here. It requires purchasing a MicroSD card and having a way to read it on a PC, Mac, or Linux computer. She had both so we got started.
I did a little research first to determine that what she wanted was a simple root, not to boot from a new operating system like Honeycomb. To make it simple to understand, the process uses a temporary operating system boot to change the files on the Nook and ‘unlock’ it, which is what rooting is.
Because the customer’s Nook Color was on version 1.3 we had to do both ManualNooter-4-5-18 and ManualNooter-4-6-16. It’s okay, you just do 4-5-18 and then 4-6-16 right after. As long as you follow the generous poster’s instructions, everything should go fine, but there is always a risk you could ‘brick’ your device rendering it useless. The customer understood this risk and chose to do it anyway – and she was then able to download any app she wanted from the Android Market.
The customer’s Nook Color had a nice pink, leather cover that I had to take it out of to access the MicroSD slot. If you’re looking for Nook Color covers, check out Nook Share, which highlights a wide range of Nook covers, cases, and accessories.