RIM slashes BlackBerry PlayBook tablet prices RIM has taken an axe to the prices it charges for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablets in the UK - again. You can now pick up the 16GB version of just £169. It was priced at £399 at launch, and yesterday would have set you back £249. That's roughly a third off in 24 hours. The 32GB now costs £199, the 64GB tablet £249, down from £ …
I picked a 32GB one up from PC world at £199 just after New Year - in fact, the day the original reg story about price cuts came out (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/03/playbook_us_price_cut/). I certainly wouldn't have bought it for £450, but as a sub-£200, powerful, flash-enabled tablet I'm very happy with it.
...their unbelievable entrenched positions in the enterprise world: few years later there still only talks and videos about a new OS (they couldn't even check copyrights before they named it!) so people left and right switching to Android and enterprise tablet use, even if it's still negligible, is all about iPads.
Great work, two incompetent clueless idiot. And no, it did not help that you finally agreed to step down a week ago - it was TWO YEARS LATE.
it will in a few weeks when the 2.0 version of the OS ships. And it's a much more stable OS than Android, but that's not surprising given it's decades long pedigree in real mission critical usage. And by mission critical I don't mean enterprise systems, more like running nuclear reactors and unmanned aircraft where really bad things happen when things go wrong.
Well, I have the satisfaction of knowing they'll almost certainly never sell them for less than what I paid for mine - I made a game for it and got one for free.
I use the thing constantly, too... play games (there are actually some good ones...) and draw with my son, prop it up on a mirror and play music at obscenely high quality and SPL while I'm in the shower (if my wife is home and I can't crank up the living room speakers to 100db instead), use it to play shoutcast and youtube music over aforementioned speakers... Enjoy the blazing bright screen that refuses to scratch even when aforementioned son drops a half-kg stone sculpture thing on it, VNC to various computers, use any ol' web site with flash without thinking about it, and have it almost never, ever crash amidst hundreds of hours of usage... (Though for some reason the browser likes to go south when you hit 'back' on Google web apps. Strange...)
It's a great piece of hardware, and the OS, bezel swiping - which I can't imagine living without now - and speakers are enough to make it hard to imagine using anything else. Unfortunately RIM managed to take a really awesome product and do everything possible to fuck it up the posterior, hard.
They fucked up the developer system (eg. huge amounts of cryptic command line work to make the environment go, developer web site that appeared to be specifically made to make you hate RIM - if you changed your app description and hit save, it would automatically submit it for approval, which takes two weeks, and which would prevent you from editing anything in the meantime; a support form would delete all your text if you lost focus, etc etc), fucked up the development timeline, fucked up the marketing, fucked up the response to all of the above, and then fucked up development of the next phone OS so they looked like has-beens, killing sales even more.
And then they became indelibly associated with London rioters.
Not a good year.
I can't speak to the last paragraph of your post but I agree 100% with the first part. The playbook is a great device, especially for the current price. I picked up mine just before Christmas and have not gone a day without spending several hours with it. I have to say the best feature of this device is how you transfer files to it, standard SMB network sharing...duh! No need for iTunes or a special cable.
The one thing I don't get though is why do most people think bridging to your phone is a bad idea? I know the cell carriers wouldn't like it but for consumers it avoids having to get another account or a plan that covers another cell device. Why not use the configuration and service already on your phone and give your tablet access to it? If RIM could offer this same functionality or close to it for non-BB phones, people might just get wise to the idea.
No thanks RIM. Although it's slightly cheaper than the Xoom that I scored from Dixons for the missus on Monday (£249 for 32GB thanks to El' Reg!), with the Xoom, half an hour after turning it on I had Netflix and the Kindle reader both installed for our viewing and reading pleasure, GMail fully syncing and new emails showing in the desktop widget and AirBubble installed to stream the living room PC's iTunes to it as an Airplay device. Alright, so the equivalent PB is £50 cheaper, but the Xoom is Ice Cream Sarnie ready and I can't do any of the above with a Playbook without thhe much fabled new OS and its bizarre Android transalation tools unless I'm mistaken.
The fact that they've kept Balsillie and Lazaridis on the board and the new CEO used to be the COO reeks of rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship to me.
Until it falls to HP-TouchPad price range.
They are comparable products - decent hardware specs, platform that nobody's developing apps for, from a company with no future in the tablet or mobile business.
Unlike HP, though, the Playbook was a make-or-break play for the company, whereas HP's tablet was just a lark. RIM appears to have successfully secured the second option for the company, too. I've never seen a company in a make-or-break position do so much to guarantee failure...
I bought one before Christmas at this price. The hardware and OS are superb; if you're a power user who needs hundreds of apps it's probably not for you, but as a tablet for casual browsing, a few games and watching the odd program on iPlayer they're great. Come next month they'll even have a native email client!
Got the 64GB Playbook for £245 at the start of the new year before the Playbook OS 2.0 announcement at CES and have just realised, I haven't needed to restart it since setting it up.
I don't have a Blackberry to pair it with, so looking forward to the QNX update next month to add messaging, browser stability, improved battery life and Android runtime features. Hopefully RIM will streamline AppWorld submissions for developers to encourage the porting of apps.
I still like my playbook (free for me, it is the companies). Wrong kind of fruit for the "too cool for school" crowd, but the size and UI make this a fantastic device for me.
Portable enough to stick in my coat pocket, reads my kindle books, plays my movies, plays my music, lets me read my gmail (either via the app, or the browser), and has a proper browser.
Good enough for me.
People really should try one before knocking it.
Got it when the price of the 16Gb dropped to £169, figured it was worth a punt and no big loss if it turned out to be a dud. But I'm very impressed with it. Everything works and works well, the form factor is great and the bezel swiping just genius. I bet it won't be long before Apple rip off that particular feature. Seriously folks, I'm no RIM-boy (not sure that's quite the right expression...) but PlayBook is no turkey. The problem is it's RIM best-kept secret.
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