Without having all the details available, the main thing to know would be whether it's possible to get root access on it. If that's possible, then pretty much anything is, since the Market itself is easily fooled.
The earlier Nooks had been rooted, but B&N figured out how to stop it, and began shipping new ones that were specced the same as the original ones, but had some hardware changes that would cause it to go into an endless reboot cycle if you tried to root it using the soft firmware update method.
Part of that change was that they took out the SD card that the OS lived on and (IIRC) replaced it with a ROM of some sort.
From what I read in the community, no one has figured out how to root a Nook with a S/N beginning with 1003 yet; I would be surprised if the Color Nook were more susceptible to rooting than the mono one is; they'll likely be using the same OS and similar hardware under the hood.
If the Color Nook uses a backlit screen instead of e-Ink, then it misses the point, for me. I hate (
hate) backlit screens for outdoor use; my laptop has one of the brightest screens I've ever seen, but a little bit of sun glare makes it unusable. My phone (Droid) is the same; great screen, borderline useless in the sun. But I can use the nook in full sunlight without a problem.
Until they come up with color e-Ink, there's no point (for me at least) in a color e-reader.