College students, especially graduate students are buying tablets (including the Nook) because of the amount of reading we have to do. There are "rentable" books available for many of the classes at the undergraduate level (where the Nook has a good reputation), but at the graduate level there are few textbooks (usually books that make good references for the future) and lots of professional journal articles. When you're reading hundreds of pages a week, the expense (not to mention the waste of paper) can be excessive. Thus, having good apps for PDF files is necessary (and there are good ones available).
I would like to see more apps directed at our needs. One thing that really bugs me (and caused some of my colleagues to go with other tablets) is that (1) you can't sideload useful apps not available from B&N, and (2) there is no statistics package of any sort available for the Nook (as of last night). I'd also like to see some way to search for apps that would be more appropriate for us and not get innundated with a bunch of "kiddie" stuff.
I've had my NT long enough that I couldn't take it in and trade up to a HD, but it's still a major help - even though having bluetooth (full-sized keyboard/mouse) and voice-to-talk would be awesome!
