Nook Simple Touch drops to $49.99 at Best Buy

In the market for a touchscreen e-ink reader? According to CNET, Best Buy has just dropped the price of Barnes and Noble’s Nook Simple Touch down to $49.99 — a savings of $30. At that price, the reader is also $20 cheaper than Amazon’s entry-level, non-touch Kindle. And the cherry on top? Free shipping.

The Nook Simple Touch isn’t your ordinary e-reader, though. While Amazon’s Kindle is built to use a proprietary operating system, Barnes and Noble utilized Android as the base for the Nook Simple Touch’s OS. And, like most things Android, this reader was rooted quickly and hacked extensively by the Android development community.

If you decide to jailbreak your Nook Simple Touch, you’ll be able to side-load Android apps onto it that you wouldn’t have been able to use otherwise. While the slow-refreshing grayscale screen isn’t good for, say, Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja, it does lend itself very well to reading apps. You could install an RSS reader onto the Nook Simple Touch or, if you really want get crazy, side-load another e-reading application like the Kindle app.

Speaking of the Kindle app, you can chcek out the video below to see it in action on a Nook Simple Touch.

This sale price is apparently good for today only, and will only stick as long as Best Buy has the Nook Simple Touch in stock. Once it’s gone, your shot at e-ink Android goodness is gone, as well. If you manage to pick one up, leave us a comment below and let us know what you think about your deeply-discounted Barnes and Noble e-reader.