Playbook
Overview - impressively spec'ed and a rock solid implementation by RIM, the Playbook has everything the typical home user, worker, student needs in a tablet for work, communication & entertainment on the go in a very friendly form factor.
Hardware - see the full specification here. Highlights are the 7-inch, 1024x600 WSVGA crystal clear LCD display, 1080p HDMI output (via microHDMI), 5 mega-pixel rear camera and 3 mega-pixel front facing camera.
The battery life is truly impressive, even with moderate use the device can go several days without needing a charge.
Included Software:
Email & Calendar - with the latest OS software update, a full email client is now included. When adding an account, you get the typical options of the various flavours or email servers and services, (i.e. Exchange, GMail) to minimize the configuration details. If you use more than one email and calendar service, such as Exchange & GMail, the Playbook nicely integrates the email and calendar data from different account into one view. This mean you can see your work and personal email and calendar information all in one place
Camera & Video - both front and rear facing cameras take still pictures and video of decent quality. Only issue is there is no flash so picture and videos appear dark if you don't have ample lighting.
Music & Video - players support most formats that I came across.
Connect to my Blackberry - If you are a Black Berry user then the BlackBerry Bridge lets you
The all important Facebook & Twitter are there with a highly functional implementations.
Print2Go - the name initially made me think it was some sort of printing application but is actually a tool which let you 'print' documents from your PC and have them go directly to your Playbook, thus the name Print 2 Go. Sounds like a very simple way
PressReader - a digital market to purchase and subscribe to digital copies of your favorite local or worldwide newspapers. The interface shows you a true representation of the entire newspaper page by page, as it was printed. When you want to read a specific article, click on the title and it converts it to a much more readable full page width text format. No more trying to follow story continues on Section A, page 16, page flipping with traditional news papers.
NewsRSSReader typical RSS reader.
Web Browser is fully functional thanks to the inclusion of Adobe Flash which many sites still use.
App World - well actually more like a small under-developed continent. The only downside to the Playbook is the limited app world. Some well know apps are there, others are noticeably missing. But you can't really blank RIM for that. They left space for functionality extension like all other providers did, just that the opportunity void hasn't been filed in the marketplace. A capitalist with not other information would certainly assume that the financial incentives were not lucrative or reliably enough to warrant enough investments for new or existing ventures.
Price - available at $149 for the 8GB WiFi model is it certainly a very inexpensive and highly functional tablet.
