I know nothing about the Pandigital, but I do have a Nook Color. I read all about rooting & it made me salivate, being a techie & all. In the end, I decided to do CM7 on a Micro SD card for my Nook, rather than root it. I set up Android Gingerbread 2.3 on the SD card with my PC, placed it in the Nook SD slot, & now I have an eReader/tablet! I leave the card in, because you have the option to just turn it on & boot into Android, or press a key as it starts & boot into the Nook interface - best of both worlds.
With the choices in tablets these days, I just felt that the Nook Color (which I got for $139, refurb) was the best way to purchase both - an eReader that could boot into a real tablet if I felt like it. So far, I'm really happy. My wife has the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, & she complains that it's slow, but I have no complaints with the Nook. It boots reasonably quickly, runs apps just fine (I have all kinds of FREE apps on it - weather, news, facebook, both the nook & amazon reader apps, browsers, etc.) & it is pretty snappy on the internet. No complaints here.
Bottom line is, the Pandigital is not the best one to root (the white one is the best to own, based on what I've read), so unless you are technically astute, you probably shouldn't try it on this one. If, however, you like to dabble & are going to buy an eReader anyway, go with the Nook Color. Find the best price you can (refurbs work just fine), buy a SanDisk 8Gb Micro SD card (it seems the unit is picky about the type of SD card it will work with, everything I've read & personal experience points to the SanDisk), search for CM7 for Nook Color, & start playing. At this point you already have a really good eReader, & if you screw up the first time on the SD card (like I did, & I've been doing tech for 18 years!), you just have to redo it on the card until it works (took me 2 tries all told) - meanwhile, your Nook is still fully functional as an eReader, its warranty is good, & once you get it working as an Android tablet, you can play to your heart's content without worry of bricking the reader itself!
Hope this helps...