I say add a little money and get the Nexus 7, a lot better, it is fairly cheap and really smooth and fast.

I find the most useful thing for a tablet is textbooks. For that unfortunately you need a 10 inch tablet to be comfortable. The nexus 10 may be a bit more expensive but just throw in the cost of a single textbook and you are there. For true laptop productivity you would be even better off with a win8 rt tablet (full included office integration) but those are quite a bit more expensive (still cheaper than ipad tho). And I have an android tablet that I have found very useful for school. Were I back in the process of looking for a new tablet the order would be RT, Android (nexus) , ipad, then blackberry.

Ultimately the Playbook is old hardware supporting an operating system with few developers and only minor updates. Its also rather thick and has no real ecosystem (aka there are serious perks if you have a lot of apple or a lot of Google products including chrome and gmail). My dad has a playbook I have tried out extensively and I just don't see it being useful at all. Maybe with bb10 it would be better but that assumes rim survives long enough to push out the update to a product that is pretty much universally considered a failure

Originally Posted by qwerty91

I find the most useful thing for a tablet is textbooks. For that unfortunately you need a 10 inch tablet to be comfortable. The nexus 10 may be a bit more expensive but just throw in the cost of a single textbook and you are there. For true laptop productivity you would be even better off with a win8 rt tablet (full included office integration) but those are quite a bit more expensive (still cheaper than ipad tho). And I have an android tablet that I have found very useful for school. Were I back in the process of looking for a new tablet the order would be RT, Android (nexus) , ipad, then blackberry.

Ultimately the Playbook is old hardware supporting an operating system with few developers and only minor updates. Its also rather thick and has no real ecosystem (aka there are serious perks if you have a lot of apple or a lot of Google products including chrome and gmail). My dad has a playbook I have tried out extensively and I just don't see it being useful at all. Maybe with bb10 it would be better but that assumes rim survives long enough to push out the update to a product that is pretty much universally considered a failure

I was deciding between the nexus 7 and Ipad mini actually, do you think their both too small for textbooks?

Originally Posted by airvcarmelo

I was deciding between the nexus 7 and Ipad mini actually, do you think their both too small for textbooks?

I really dislike ios products because of the extreme closed nature of the system, the iTunes requirment, lack of drag n drop and near zero customizability. That said I was extremely impressed by the size, thinness, and overall quality of the mini. The actual hardware is subpar but it really does have a lot more screen size than an a android 7 inch tablet. It it good for textbooks? No idea... check it out in store.

The reason why I said a 7 inch was too small is in order to read text you have to zoom in then pan across the screen. On a ten inch tablet the only user input required is to go to the next page. No zooming and panning etc. Its closer to the size of a textbook rather than a paperback novel

Originally Posted by airvcarmelo

I was deciding between the nexus 7 and Ipad mini actually, do you think their both too small for textbooks?

I have a Nexus 7 and its perfect. Spending late nights at the lab - just throw the 7 in my pocket and no need for a backpack or textbook.

Its a good size to read books and notes and would recommend it for sure.

I have both the playbook and the iPad in my family, and I can personally say, a 7" screen is not enough to replace a laptop, you'll definitely need to go spring for a 10". In my opinion, I'd say mission carrying your laptop this semester, and save up during the summer and spring for a 10", 7" is useless, no one uses the playbook, it just sits there, somewhere...

naw yall are wrong
pen and paper is the best platform ever



we have enough ECEs in this thread and they're the only ones who know wtf they're talking about

Yep! i have one and it's amazing. I definitely think it's better than the iPad. You can open most programs on it and you can purchase a keyboard to hook up. GO FOR IT!

I love the PlayBook. I put all my lecture notes and textbooks on it, perfect for following along and reading on the go. 7" is good enough for me, it's a very comfortable experience.

The browser is really good. It can crash some times, because it is built with AIR, but it is the full desktop experience. Everyone gets too dramatic about apps, the only reason they are so needed is because the mobile browsers were poor. Nonetheless, you can sideload many Android apps.

The touch screen is very good. Some stylus' require a bit of force, but there are some good ones out there. The OS itself is very stable and reliable. You can have many apps open running at the same time, because the QNX multitasking is very efficient.

You can find the PlayBook around $100 for 16 GB, and there are cloud services (all used well with the browser but there are apps, Files and Folders is top notch). Many accessories are on sale at Staples too right now, fantastic deals. With BB10 coming out, the browser experience will be vastly improved, the number of new apps is rumoured to be around 120k+, improved messaging. Combined with the innovative software and security (not to mention BBM on the PB), it's an amazing deal. Best you can buy for that price range.

PS. If you have a BlackBerry phone, it's a no brainer.

Originally Posted by ryan10200

I love the PlayBook. I put all my lecture notes and textbooks on it, perfect for following along and reading on the go. 7" is good enough for me, it's a very comfortable experience.

The browser is really good. It can crash some times, because it is built with AIR, but it is the full desktop experience. Everyone gets too dramatic about apps, the only reason they are so needed is because the mobile browsers were poor. Nonetheless, you can sideload many Android apps.

The touch screen is very good. Some stylus' require a bit of force, but there are some good ones out there. The OS itself is very stable and reliable. You can have many apps open running at the same time, because the QNX multitasking is very efficient.

You can find the PlayBook around $100 for 16 GB, and there are cloud services (all used well with the browser but there are apps, Files and Folders is top notch). Many accessories are on sale at Staples too right now, fantastic deals. With BB10 coming out, the browser experience will be vastly improved, the number of new apps is rumoured to be around 120k+, improved messaging. Combined with the innovative software and security (not to mention BBM on the PB), it's an amazing deal. Best you can buy for that price range.

PS. If you have a BlackBerry phone, it's a no brainer.

are you high? worst browsing experience ever.

Originally Posted by SydWitches

are you high? worst browsing experience ever.

How so? I'd like to hear your opinion then.

I'll go for bb tho..

Does the fact that the playbook is upgradeable to BB 10 make it worth buying now?

It was always going to be upgradeable to BB10.

In my opinion, I would get the Playbook IF you had a Blackberry phone. Blackberry bridge is insanely awesome because it can connect your phone and tablet so easily.
Personally, since I have an Android phone, I went with an Android Tablet: the 32gb Nexus 7. I've really grown to like the Android ecosystem. I have no complaints about it whatsoever.
With Playbook, Blackberry10 will be absolutely insane. The app world already has over 70 000 apps for Blackberry10 which isn't even released yet. Developers have that much faith in BB10.