More than a year ago, Microsoft invested $US300 million in Barnes & Noble's plan to spin-off its Nook business. At the time, the deal promised a few tablet-centric possibilities. Would Nook tablets dump Android in favor of Windows? Would the Nook catalog be part of an entertainment-centric device like the still-mythical Xbox Surface?

Amazon is bragging about 12 of its premium app partners coming to the Kindle Fire in a bid to ensure its media tablet isn't lost amid reports about Barnes & Noble's new Nook Tablet.

Barnes & Noble has followed in the footsteps of Amazon's Kindle Fire with a new Nook Tablet designed to compete with the iPad by not competing with the iPad. In fact, both the newly announced Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire are trying to be what many thought the iPad would be: A handheld media consumption device with a form factor larger than a smartphone.

Ladies and gentlemen: we have a winner in the much ballyhooed tablet war - and it's not a strictly a tablet. Without a doubt, the winner is the old-school, E Ink-based e-reader.

The $US249 Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet may look like its predecessor, Nook Color, but that's where the comparisons stop. When I picked it up the Nook Tablet it was clear that this tablet was leaps ahead of B&N's first-gen effort. That said, the Nook Tablet is not a full-featured tablet and lacks built-in Bluetooth, stereo speakers, GPS, and front- and rear-facing cameras.

On September 28, the company will hold a press event in New York City, where it'll likely announce a tablet that's smaller but also much cheaper than Apple's iPad. Although the invitation doesn't say what Amazon will be talking about, the company rarely holds press events for anything other than new Kindle hardware.

Amazon's unveiling of a Kindle tablet would shake up the industry and pose one of the biggest threats to the Apple iPad -- which is why the technology world has its eyes on the online retailer as it prepares for a media gathering in New York this week ahead of the holiday season.

It sports a color touch screen, looks much like a BlackBerry PlayBook and has no physical buttons on the surface of the device. And it comes at a bargain price.