Expected to ship towards the end of November, the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader has both a black-and-white e-paper display and a color touchscreen panel. In spite of rumors, the panel is not multi-touch, but you can still use it to flip through different books and documents.

Barnes & Noble will offer e-books at prices lower than their hard copy cousins through an online store, and the device will have access to Google's scanned book library.

The niftiest feature down that alley: you can take your Nook into a Barnes & Noble store and read ebooks for free over the store's Wi-Fi before buying them, just as if you were browsing through the paper and hardbacks there.

The Nook has already been pre-ordering, and it was scheduled to go on sale in Barnes & Noble stores on November 30th for $259. However, The New York Times reported on November 20th that Barnes & Noble was surprised by the volume of pre-orders, and that the Nook is sold out for the holidays. New orders won't ship until January 4th. That's bittersweet for Barnes & Noble, isn't it?

[Images courtesy of Engadget and Gizmodo.]