Technology
My thoughts on the playbook
No… I do not actually own the playbook.. I was only able to open one up at my store and demo it to customers or potential customers looking for a tablet.
Turns out the employees play with it more than the customers do. Go figure.. lol
The Playbook is RIM’s entry into the tablet market with the 7″ tablet wifi only Playbook. The device does not have a native email, chat or calendar client but instead relies on a bridge program to bridge with an existing blackberry to sync the emails, calendars, contacts, bbm and tether internet without requiring wifi or another 3g sim card and/or data plan. I haven’t gotten the chance to play with the bridge program for obvious reason (syncing my bb to the playbook means everyone would have access to my information and I just can’t allow that to happen. Especially since it’s just a demo unit for the store. lol). It is also the first device from RIM to include their recently acquired QNX OS which they have implement into the playbook
The screen is very responsive and the menu function is pretty nifty. Gets rid of most of the button minus the volume up/down, play/pause and the standby/power button. The rear facing camera is takes pretty nice quality pictures for the type of camera it is, but I havent really used the front facing camera. Not expecting much out of that one since that’s usually meant for video chat. And no one needs HD qualify for video chat.
RIM announced that they are going to release an emulator that will be able to play most if not all the android apps seamless in the unit which would give it a much better edge over it’s competitor (face it.. Blackberry app world is terrible compared to the Android Marketplace or Apple’s App Store. The apps released for the blackberry are behind in the times and sometimes suck out loud with very limited selection. With the inclusion of Android app support that would bring more people away from the iPad and get the Playbook. (hopefully).
Right now the biggest disadvantage over the other tablet is the lack of native essential apps such as the BBM chat, email and calendar. That requires the user to have a Blackberry (I believe OS6 and up is required, but I could be wrong) to take full advantage of the unit.
The unit comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB version from $389.99, $489.99 and $589.99
If I hadn’t already gotten the Motorola Xoom tablet I might have picked this one up, but then again I might not have. haha the main reason that turned me away from the Playbook was the fact the screen was a little small for my liking. but it’s relatively cheap compared to the other tablets on the market. though those are bigger in size.
The 16GB and 32GB is available at my store location (Canada Computers North York) but if you are interested in the 64GB, arrangements can be made and we can order one for you. Right now for customers who do not have a blackberry and are wanting to get one. there is a promotion going on with a bundle. Get the Playbook with a 9780 Bold and get $50 MIR + whatever promotion is going on. Pair it with the 9800 Torch and get $100 MIR.
Moto Xoom
It’s been 2 weeks since I got my Motorola Xoom tablet and so far I like it. The Motorola Xoom is the first dual core tablet to run the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS from Google. Developed by Motorola with the help of Google it was meant to be the iPad killer. Which so far does not look like the case market wise. Not too many people know about the Android platform as they do with the iPad. Regardless I am an Android fan and I will choose the Android platform over the iOS platform anyday.
Anyway. So far my experience with the Xoom is pretty good. The screen is responsive and the quality is pretty decent. The battery life is great and I can use it for a couple days before having to recharge it. The only issue I had at first with it is with the flaw with the Tegra design. Supposedly it is unable to decode high profile encoded videos therefore making mkvs pretty much useless. The only way around it is to convert it to mp4s and lowering the resolutions of 1080p movies to 720p in order to watch it on the xoom. There is also an issue with the fact that it doesn’t seem to like video files over 4GBs it has trouble reading it. Most of the time it refuses to read it.
Overall I am enjoying using my Moto Xoom. But i might still pick up the Playbook.. Don’t know yet.
Otterbox experience
I am very impressed with the service Otterbox provides for their products. Granted that I’ve had a few bad experience with the product itself, overall the Otterbox is a great product nonetheless.
I started using the Otterbox when I got the 9700 Bold. That was a great case. I could toss it and it wouldnt break. Then I switched to the 9800 Torch. Obviously I got the Otterbox commuter case when it was made available.
The otterbox case for the 9800 is slightly different from the 9700 case since the Bold is one piece and the 9800 torch has 2 pieces. Since it is a slider phone one piece is for the body while the second piece is for the screen portion of the phone.
The body protection is very tough while the screen portion I would say is the weakest link. That piece i’ve had the most issue with since that is where it broke twice.
When that happened I contacted Otterbox and explained my situation with them. They responded within a few hours apologizing about the bad experience like it was somehow their fault. They asked me to provide them with more information such as my address, number etc… They responded very quickly again letting me know that they are sending me a replacement unit for the broken case. They did not even ask me to send the broken case back unit to them or ask about original receipt. The important thing is that my case broke and they sent me a new case within a few days and now my case is once again protected.. 
Great service from Otterbox. Will definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a protective case…
- @alanhsu disappointed... i thought you were an IT guy....
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