E-book readers like the Amazon Kindle may be all the rage this holiday season. But five years from now, they’ll seem as laughably primitive as the Commodore 64.

“Oh, man, remember those Cro-Magnon e-book readers?” we’ll say. “They used E Ink screens  black text on gray. No color. No touch screens. And every time you turned a page, you got this weird black-white-black flash. Can you believe anyone bought those?”

Well, it’s time for some progress. Barnes & Noble’s new Nook Color ($250) is the first big-name e-book reader with a color touch screen. It has confusing aspects, but it’s light-years better than last year’s slow, kludgy black-and-white Nook. (The company says the new Nook was designed by a new team, based in Silicon Valley and composed largely of former Palm employees.)

The hardware is handsome. It’s an 8-by-5-inch slab, half an inch thick, with an aluminum border and rubberized back. You can poke your finger through the triangular cut-out in the lower left corner. It’s just a design quirk, although maybe you could attach your key ring to it.