Lest all the hoo-haw over Apple’s iPad, and while Amazon is still dusting itself off after some of its worst press ever, Barnes & Noble announced yesterday that “its popular nook e-book reader is back in stock online and will be rolling out in the majority of the bookseller’s U.S. stores this week.”

According to a Newsfactor report by Mark Long, at least one analyst expects it to do well, despite a rocky start wherein it got terrible reviews, and wasn’t available for the holidays as expected. James McQuivey of Forrester Research says, “The nook, despite its slow start, is priced right, targeted to book readers rather than skipping off to focus on magazine or newspaper readers, and, most importantly, the nook will be featured in front of millions of book buyers every month as they walk through the store. You can’t underestimate the power of that.”

Meanwhile, Newsfactor reports,

The temporary time-out on nook sales gave the bookseller enough breathing space to address some of the machine’s software shortcomings. “nook v 1.2 will be made available to customers in a seamless over-the-air update over approximately the next week,” a Barnes & Noble spokesperson wrote in a blog.

Among other things, the software upgrade improves the way e-books and periodicals open on the machine, as well as enhance the response of the Reading Now & Settings buttons. Moreover, the current reading page, as well as the bookmarks on all e-books, becomes saved automatically whenever the nook is powered off. And personal files that have been downloaded onto the machine can now be sorted by author and title.