Ok.
Everyone talks about rooting. What does this exactly mean? Why do you do it? What advantages do you get? How do you do it? Its it difficult? Or do I need to pay some Asian guy?
Ignore rooting for now. Buy the device you choose and use it without worrying about what rooting is. Eventually you may find that the manufacturer made some choices for you that you don't like, and you may decide you want to overcome those limitaitons, and at that point you'll look into what rooting is and does for you, but for your initial usage and purchase you don't really have to concern yourself with it.
Also which one allows free Wifi to work?
They all allow free wifi. Every device will allow you to surf the internet out of the box on your wireless network, watch online videos, and do most internet related tasks.
What else can a Nook not do?
Eh. It's not a powerhouse gaming machine. Looks like it doesn't have cameras. Other than that it's a wash.
What is this shit about apps? Are you talking about necessary applications or dipshit stuff like, press this button to activate a gun making application so that when you shake your tablet it makes shooting noises? What exactly are we talking here?
An app is simply a program that does stuff for you. Yes, you can download an app that makes shooting or farting noises, if that's your thing. I'm currently using a relaxation melody generator for white noise (rain, ocean, wind chimes at the moment) and it's got the baby fast asleep. That is a single app. I also read and reference books/comics/manga/journals/datasheets/schematics/etc on it. That is also an app. I check my several email accounts. That's an app. I surf the intertubes. That's an app. I track all my devices (I know my wife made it safely to the conference center in cleveland without having to call her because she's got the ipad with her. When my son misplaces his ipod I can usually find it.) That's an app. I play words with friends with a few people from here, several people in my family, and a few friends via another app. I was streaming the local geek group's meeting online through Ustream using the ipad. That's an app.
An app is just a program that does something for you. Generally speaking when you run an app it takes the whole screen, and you focus on just that one app. When you want to do something else, you switch to another app. When you go back to the first one, you're usually right where you left off. Some apps run in the background as well - so the relax melody app I'm running can run while I read manga, check email, surf the blogosphere, or play words with friends.
Also, if I root it and I download shit off the web, can I get free apps?
Generally you won't have to root your device to load free apps off the internet. Generally there are free apps for anything you might be interested in doing in the app stores. They may be free, or ad supported, but you can do an amazing amount of stuff for no additional cost.
My price range is around $200, I'm not paying 700+ dollars for an iPad, I'd rather buy a small laptop.
I recommend the Kindle Fire. It fits in your price range, it's
very usable out of the box, it's extraordinarily popular so if/when you do want to root it, upgrade it, etc you'll find a lot of people have walked that path and it's an easy road.
Is the Nook new? Is that why so many people don't mention it?
The Nook Tablet is new. Barnes and Noble has had nook ereaders for some time now, but this is the first one that could be used as more than a glorified ereader out of the box (ie, without hacking it much). People don't talk about it much because the kindle fire came out and stole its thunder. If the fire hadn't been introduced, then I suspect the nook would have been more well known, but without Amazon's marketing effort and work with major developers to get kindle specific apps into their store the nook never would have made a huge splash even without the kindle stealing its thunder.
It's a reasonable competitor to the Kindle Fire in every respect, except it's not amazon, and it does not have the marketing juggernaut amazon brought to bear when it introduced the fire.
What the fuck is Android? Seems like everything is "Androids". What is this? Some type of OS... which is largely regarded like Vista. Limited as fuck. Badly done?
Android is an operating system owned and developed by Google. If it were a human, you could say that for phones and PDAs, it's gotten past the gangly, pimply teenage years and is a freshman in college. For tablets it's still going through puberty.
Apple's tablet/phone operating system is called iOS. It's perhaps a college senior who's a player - it's got a bright future, but there's still room for an upstart super genius freshman to move in. It's polished and slick, and if you manage to look past the fact that all it's trying to do is bed you, you can expect a lot from it.
Windows has revamped their mobile device OS. Again. And it's polished and very usable on the phone and PDA, but it's not a tablet OS, so doesn't even meet your needs yet.
The general consensus I've read is, fork over 7 twinkies for a good tablet the size of a watermelon to carry with you everywhere or "good luck with the other shit that are all warped deformed children of the overlord".
You will be very happy with the kindle fire. You'll probably be happy with the nook. As a tablet beginner I would not suggest going dirt cheap (find a $69 andoird tablet on woot? Skip it!), but you don't need the iPad. You'll be very happy with the kindle or nook, and after a year or so when other tablets mature a little more you might make a different choice, but by then you'll probably be hooked.
The problem with android is a problem of poor manufacturer support. Amazon is going to support the kindle fire very, very well, so you should not have a problem with it. Barnes and Noble should provide good support as well. They have to if they want to keep selling you content, which is their main source of income.
You won't be disappointed with them.
