If I were to give a stupid award, today’s would easily go to the Wall Street Journal’s Brett Arends for his latest iPad article.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]His article entitled “Move Over, Apple! My Tablet Cost $200,” goes through the process of purchasing a tablet, but he admits he didn’t want to spend $500 for an iPad. His choice? A Barnes & Noble Nook Color.

He calls it a tablet, but it’s not a tablet. That point had to be made.

Comparing the Nook to an iPad is like rolling up to a new Ferrari with your 1974 Pinto and bragging that your car was cheaper.

Arends Nook didn’t really do anything out of the box, other than reading magazines, which it was intended to do. He had to run a hack on the software so it would run Android. The hack, of course, is done at your own risk, so if you screw it up, you have a dead Nook and will have to go buy an iPad anyway.

Hacking a Nook to have limited functionality is like throwing a spoiler on the ’74 Pinto and believing you’ve changed the car.

So, when he finished, how did it work?

“It doesn’t have any cameras. It has a slower processor. It’s not for power users. The video support is pretty limited. A few Android programs still won’t run on it. And dedicated gamers will doubtless find it frustrating,” wrote Arends.

And with all that said, he seems thoroughly impressed with his new tablet.

If this is your idea of a tablet, then Apple probably doesn’t want you anyway. Apple takes pride in its design, software and user experience. Clearly, Arends doesn’t.

Enjoy your Pinto.