flyanddive, That demo is nothing that my Motorola Xoom couldn't already do, and came out in early 2011 (which means it's not vaporware). Okay, the split keyboard could be useful, I'll give them that.

Anyway, I'm not wowed by that presentation that Windows 8 is going to kill laptops. The Atrix has been out for a LONG time and that has failed to make any inroads as a laptop killer.

Anecdotally, the only two devices I've seen friends use to replace their laptops are iPads and Asus Transformers (and those were women).

My problem with a lot of the tablets is that I don't want a 10" device -- it's too big. The 7" size is perfect IMHO.

I have a Toshiba Thrive 10.1. 10x16 aspect ration

It is much better in the hand than an Ipad. 4x3 ratio

Reading books on it is very good.

I am tempted to pick up 7" kindle at some point because of it light weight and portability.

I have not held a playbook.

Have you seen the new galaxy note with the 5.3 screen? LOL...it's neither a tablet nor a phone or both depending on how you look at it.

Sucks IMHO.

The Kindle Fire is interesting, but underpowered (severely-so)-- for the price, it is what it is.

My expectation is that I'll be able to turn the Playbook into a Kindle by sideloading the Android app and at the same time have a VERY competent browser and media device. Since I can tether off my phone the inability to directly access 3g doesn't bother me.

I tether wirelessly with Samsung Galaxy S for use of my tablet in the car.

Works great when car shopping.

Tether is the way to go IMHO. I run a Galaxy S II LTE for tether.

Yeah T-Mo on the SGS-II is ridiculously fast in HSPA+ areas. I regularly see 10Mbps+ performance, and have seen 20Mbps. The latter is better than what I can pull over my landline connection to the Colo!

How does one tether?

I'm a total know-nothing when it comes to these things.

I ordered the playbook. I'll probably give it to my Mom.

If your phone can do it on bluetooth it will work directly, or you use the wireless hotspot function on the phone if not.

Bluetooth? That's really how bad it is. I have an Iphone 3GS.

I bet I can find a youtube video to show me how. That's how I figured out how to fix the ride on lawn mower and other things in the house!

How BAD?! Bluetooth for a tether link is EXCELLENT for this purpose. It's MUCH lower power than Wifi and thus doesn't hit the battery nearly as hard, it's plenty fast, and it's secure.

What's not to like?

I consider Wifi tethering (which the Playbook also does obviously, since it has a Wifi radio in it) a poor bastard second cousin to bluetooth for this purpose.

Gen,

What's the battery life like with the PlayBook? Curious. . .

Not sure yet. Appears to be pretty good.... It's been sitting mostly-idle all day on my desk (on, but no screen, grabbed once in a while to check email and such) and it's at 92%.

I suspect on a constant-use basis it's probably around 6 hours or so. The charger is 1700ma, which is in the gonzo-big category and it takes a while to charge it up, which implies a damn big battery in the back of the thing....

One thing that ISN'T so great is that if you actually shut it off (as opposed to letting it time out or putting it in standby) it takes a fair bit of time to start up from a cold start. How big of a deal this is will largely turn on how long it will last sitting there not connected to anything. So far it definitely looks pretty much like "do whatever the hell you want in a day and it'll make it until you go to bed", which makes this mostly immaterial as you simply never turn it "off for real."

Incidentally it DOES sync Gmail/Google Contacts/Calendar, etc. HOWEVER, it only syncs the PRIMARY Google calendar -- if you have multiple ones, it will only grab the primary. 90% there and for many people, enough.,

I meant I don't know how to use Bluetooth by how bad is that. I'm a technical retard.

Oh that's easy. You simply turn it on, tell your phone to be "visible", and it shows up. Hit "pair", confirm the security is ok, you're done.

Then in the "Tether" menu pick the carrier you use and say "connect." If the phone can deal with it (and your plan permits it) you're in.

Wifi hotspot on your phone works too but the problem with doing that is power consumption - with the phone in your pocket it'll be dead in a couple of hours. On Bluetooth you can easily double that, which makes for a big difference.

Cool - thanks for the info on power useage so far. I did a cursory look around a bit (not too in depth though) and didn't see any battery or power usage info or comments.

Been thinking about something like this. You just might get me to jump.

Any particular reason (other than price) that you went with the 16GB Book, versus the 32GB or 64GB version?

Yeah - it's a toy, and I see no reason to pay for the memory. What am I going to use it for?

If I wanted a primary media device (e.g. to store music or movies) it would be different, but that's not my intention. Nearly all of the memory is available -- the OS only consumes about 1.3-1.4GB.

I wish it had a SD card slot, but you can't have everything.

I would be down with a widescreen 5" phone, even an extended ratio (21:9) would work for me.. I doubt I'll see one on Virgin Mobile anytime soon tho :p

O.k. I see it now. Once I get the device, I'll give it a try. I had to have it mailed b/c there were none in the store anywhere around here.

Yeah they're disappearing FAST at that price.

Good point Gen. As you say, I already have the laptop thing nailed down.

Thanks!

Yeah, when Sir Cracks-a-lot fixes the jailbreaker for the newer OS then it will (again) be possible to sideload GAPPS, which in turn means the Android Market will work.

RIMM really ought to figure out how to deal with that and SUPPORT IT, as it would make the Playbook a category killer, especially if they could manage to build them profitably somewhere around the $300-350 mark.

I have the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. It has a dual 1.2 GHz proc. I use that thing all the time at home. It plays hi-def movies off my media server, will instantly display the feed from my security cameras, will play podcasts and internet radio, and browse the internet and check email. It's very responsive. I agree that the 7" form factor is perfect as it easily allows one-handed use.

The only thing that*****es me off is that copy/paste and typing long paragraphs has some really bad UI problems at the moment. Other than that it's terrific.

Right now they are around $340 on Amazon, but they were around $200 about a month ago for a week or so.

These tablets are only going to get more powerful and useful in the next few years. As long as they don't lock these things down too tightly, the future looks pretty damn exciting.

Android needs to fix the text edit and copy/paste features. It sucks balls on my galaxy II. Apple has this down though and it works very well on my iPhone and iPad.