Barnes & Noble Launches the $199 Nook Tablet

In order to better compete with Amazon’s latest Kindle Fire model, Barnes & Noble announced the release of the $199 Nook Tablet with 8 GB of storage.

This new model shares the same model of dual-core, 1 GHz processor as the more expensive 16 GB Nook Tablet, which you’ll be able to get for $249. But, the 8 GB model still has only half the RAM, at 512 MB. Both models offer users the possibility of expanding their storage capacity by up to 32 GB with the presence of a microSD card slot.

Another piece of good news coming from the Barnes & Noble company is also the more relaxed terms on storage of content coming from outside the official Nook Store. Out of the 8 GB available, only 1 GB will be reserved exclusively for Nook Store content, and the rest of the 4 GB will become available for other content, such as music or movies. (The O.S. of the tablet simply gobbles up the rest of the 3 GB of memory).

Barnes & Noble took flack for its fine print, which said that only 1 GB was allowed for outside content, upon the launch in November of the original 16 GB Nook Tablet. But don’t be too happy, since that restriction is still very much still valid for the 16 GB model, but the fine print now reads that users will be able to visit a Barnes & Noble store on or after March 12 in order to reconfigure the internal memory of their devices. But we’re still not clear on the amount of space users will be able to free up for all outside content.

Both Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire were launched around the same time last year. Even though both devices are pretty much low-cost, 7-inch Android-based tablets with simplified software, Amazon’s “baby” seems to be the one winning the war. An iSuppli report put Amazon in second place in the tablet market, just after Apple, while Barnes & Noble managed to be placed on the fourth place, trailing Samsung. But neither of the two companies has yet to release an official statement regarding their sales figures.