Photo Credit: Tim Carmody

Tech companies can sometimes be touchy about letting journalists get their hands on brand-new devices. At today’s Barnes & Noble event, representatives demoed working Nook Tablets for the press, but we weren’t allowed to actually handle them ourselves. It’s a common precaution. Amazon did the same thing at its Kindle Fire launch event.

It’s partly about protecting scarce pre-release devices, and partly about protecting the information on them — corporate-level usernames are handy in the wrong hands. But, mostly, manufacturers are interested in managing the product n...