Blackberry PlayBook : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

RIM (Research In Motion) is a fabulously profitable Canadian maker of Java-powered cell phone/PDAs that have colour screens and an alphanumeric keyboard. They have now branched out into a portable computer similar to Apple’s iPad which they call the Playbook.

It has a dual core 1 GHz Processor with 1 Gig of RAM (Random Access Memory). It has a 7” 1024 × 600 screen. This were considered formidable desktop specs not that long ago.

It has two HD cameras one facing forward and one facing back.

It uses the QNX OS (Operating System), which is what drives the world’s credit card system. It supports Java. Its browser is the first I have heard of that supports HTML5. It supports Flash, which lets you view the bulk of the streaming video on the web.

It is not a cell phone, but it is designed to work in conjection with a Blackberry cell phone. The website is cagey about whether the pad itself has any communication ability without an aux cell phone. They don’t mention Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) ability either. Presumably it has none. The site is quite frustrating, with a patronising “Don’t worry your pretty little head’ design mostly empty black space. “Just look at the pretty glossy pictures.” That is pretty common these days, but even the downloadable specs are full of fluff like that. At least they tell you the processor speed and amount of RAM — specs competitor Apple refuses to divulge.