That browser-and-e-reader combination could be where some larger textbook e-readers are headed. But I'm hoping that the combo will be made available on a smaller device that offers more general reading material. Barnes & Noble said when it announced the Nook that it may someday make the lower screen a full browser. I'm optimistic.

In the current iteration, the Nook's lower color screen opens to five small areas that you touch to activate content or functions. For example, the first area on the left is entitled "The Daily" which brings up, for now, three newspapers on the upper screen: The Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

Then, if you want to choose, say, The Financial Times from the list of newspapers on the upper screen, you must move the cursor with touch controls on the lower screen. This awkward moving from screen to screen annoyed me. After several tries, I managed to open an article in one newspaper -- although I was aiming for its home screen or front page. After a few tries, I decided I'd prefer to browse for the home page of the same newspaper on my BlackBerry Curve, trading speed in browsing for a smaller font on a much smaller screen.

The other touch buttons on the lower screen offered choices for fixing Nook settings or for reading a book for free in-store via Wi-Fi for an hour. At the store where I had the demo, there were several free-reading choices, including a popular new book on wines.

Adjusting the font size took a surprisingly long time. Twice, moving from large to very large font size took at least 10 seconds, but that may be because the Nook was adjusting the entire book all at once. By comparison, this font-adjusting function takes much less time on an iPod Touch, where I bumped up the font size to read a play by Shakespeare, which I've done several times.