From a fellow noob who just went through this. I'll give you my opinion on the options and what you get at each turn. Others can add the details of how you do each step..
Level 0: Your Stock NT. Gets you ebooks and apps from within the "walled garden" of B&N. Your experience is controlled by B&N and you purchase all your content from B&N only.
Level 1: Stock NT w/Basic Root. Root gives access to install 3rd party applications. What that means is you get the same B&N experience and UI as stock, but at a minimum you can install content from outside the B&N electronic store. You're still running B&N's operating environment. To do this you really are just unlocking a feature so your B&N content remains safe in their cloud and does not need to be backed up. Rooting in of itself, gives you access to more capabilities withing the software that B&N provides on the device, it does not replace the software with something else.
For us noobs this is made more complicated because B&N implemented a reversion in their "updated" firmware 1.4.1 and above that re-locks down the device and seals off the walled garden. It makes a Level 1 device downgrade to a Level 0 device. Moral: Firmware upgrades from the manufacturer are usually not a good idea. Often older devices get no new features and have "unauthorized" features disabled. That's why you see all the warnings about NOT updating to the latest B&N firmware. The root instructions will direct you to your 1st 3rd party application, to disable B&N over the air firmware updates so you won't be unwittingly unrooted.
Level 2: Rooted with UI changes. Since rooting allows installing 3rd party applications, you can choose to replace portions of the B&N UI with 3rd party launchers, ebook readers, (for example the Android Kindle Reader Software). Your underlying software is still the B&N android software, and your B&N (and Amazon) content will be backed up in their respective clouds. At this Level, you'll have to worry about backing up 3rd party data from any 3rd party apps. (There is an app for doing that.)
----Ok, up to this point it's simply customization of the B&N software...
The next levels involve wholesale replacement of the B&N software with another version of the Android OS. In these levels, you are replacing and in some cases overwriting the B&N software completely with something else, and your tablet graduates into a completely new UI and operational experience.
Level 3: Boot alternate OS (such as CM7) from SD card. This level allows you to insert a specially formatted SD card into your NT and boot into a completely different environment. In this mode, the entire internal memory and its respective content is bypassed and ignored. It is as if you swapped your hard drive for another in your PC or mac or its as if you booted into a different operating system in its own partition.
The beauty of Level 3 is that no modifications to the NT are required, and all of the existing content of the stock or basic rooted NT is copied down from the cloud to the external SD card. The existing memory of the NT is unaltered, so if you boot without the SD card the NT will boot like any other stock NT.
While discussing this approach, I'll touch on a varying problem or caveat with this method. Depending on the brand and build of the SD card you use, it is possible that you will be required to boot the NT with a USB cable attached to either the AC adaptor or another computer supplying power. This "tether" is technically only required for the first few seconds of the bootup from SD. If your NT/SD combination requires the "tether" procedure, you won't be able to boot the SD without it and it will boot to stock (ignoring the SD card). This can be really annoying if you intend to shut the tablet down to save battery, or you crash to the point where a reboot is required (and you're not near a USB cable).
Level 4: Replacing the B&N firmware internally with an alternative Android OS. This level is similar to Level 3, but now you are replacing all of the B&N software with something else. Your nook is no longer a "nook" as far as B&N is concerned. You will be erasing software on the device and replacing it, so there definately is more danger that you will get stuck with an unusable device than any of the other Levels. The payoff is you get to use the internal memory, you won't have the reboot requires tether problem described in the previous paragraph, and you'll be able to supplement the internal memory with storage from an external SD card that can be formatted to hold content.
My reccomendation is to try the basic root (Level 1 or 2) out for a few days or weeks. You might find that the additional capabilities are really all you need. For my non-technical friends, I move them to Level 2 and they are thrilled to have a fast tablet that can handle ebook and app content from the "big 2" sources.
Then, if you are so inclined, go for it and try Level 3 using a blank SD card.
Last point...regarding all the often conflicting and overlapping threads on rooting:
As the devs have discovered new, safer, easier and better ways to unlock the NT a new or alternate thread is often started with a different approach to the same ends (achieving root). In many of these cases the devs have taken things a bit further and bundled into their unlock what they feel would be the most desired apps to have after unrooting, saving the time of having to do a lot of installing and configuring of common components. In my opinion, the best resource for finding the latest "version" and most refined techniques is to look at the first post of this thread!
---------- Post added at 03:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:39 PM ----------
I decided to also reply with less verbiage and direct links for those who just want the answers.
No need to do this. There is no content on the NT that won't get re-downloaded from B&N servers.
Yes, see below for the links. I recommend purchasing a small SD card (8gb) and using the SD Card root instructions rather than messing with ADB and drivers.
For a 16gb NT, I would follow albertwertz's SD Card Unlock thread
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1439630
For an 8gb NT , you can try jichuan89's thread
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1529553
Once you have 3rd party apps and content, you can use an app such as Titanium Backup to do this. Titanium Backup is included in some packages or can be obtained from the Market (or a Google Search)
If you need to bring the NT back to B&N for warranty repairs (if that is possible), or if you want B&N to repartition your internal drive, you'll need to backup before you give B&N the device, and restore after you've re-rooted (and have access to Titanium Backup).
Each ROM will have specific instructions in its thread.
See the paragraph discussing Level 3 and Level 4 (above) for information on SD vs. internal.
Hope this helps!
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