[mapsonburt]

Downstairs in Sears Electronic dept. They are doing some testing for sears rollout and the RIM representative has a preprod unit he's showing customers. VERY cool. Full report later but get down there this evening. TORONTO of course.

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[gdong]

Cool, I work in the tower at eaton center. Goign to check it out soon!

[PDSchofield]

Hmmm I am heading past there shortly... definately gonna stop and take a look... That being said a few minutes of hands on today is going to make the next 10 days even more torture....

[len_sole]

Work in Atrium on Bay.. Will drop by for a bit soon. Excited.

[Lawcheehung]

Don't forget pics / videos!

[len_sole]

I'm there now. Unfortunately the guy isn't here right now and I have to leave soon. The csrs said he is here somewhere though and he should be available this weekend here as well.
Don't quote me on that though.

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[len_sole]

So I didn't get to try it, but there was a Sears csr handing out pamphlets for pre-ordering at the entrance of the store. He said he was excited about the device. He said he has a Mac and iPhone but he's really punmped for the playbook for it's multitasking capabilities mainly. He said that was a cool feature. Also flash and hdmi have him interested and he said the size is more realistic (I guess compared to the iPad)?

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[sf49ers]

can you try netflix.com if possible

[jonahz]

can you try netflix.com if possible

Or .ca seeing how youre in TO?

[mapsonburt]

Apologies for the brevity of the initial post. I had a 90 minute commute and wanted to get the info out ASAP so the forum members could get to see it. I found out from a friend who was involved in setting up the network Sears will use to set it up that he was there ("David in a black RIM shirt") and since I was in the store, headed right down and took an initial look. I managed to spend about 15 minutes (as much time as I wanted) with the device. David wasn't that knowledgeable about the device and was clear that this was a preproduction device without all of the preloaded SW and features. It did have Need4Speed and Doc's to Go and some icons for things like Bing, Hotmail, Adobe Reader, etc. I didn't think to get to every screen but I played with the camera (very cool), ran N4S alongside full video movie, picture app, and about 4 other apps that I could see. I was very impressed with the responsiveness.

I've been developing my app to get the "free" BB and so have spent a lot of time with the simulator... this thing is SO much more responsive than that... I loaded it up as much as I thought I could and couldn't see any noticeable degradation in performance. It did have a few bugs with picture orientation (some app screens were upside down) but landscape/portrait worked fine. I suspect there was a bug in an app (don't remember which one) that wasn't responding to orientation changes. At one point I had about 12 apps open.

The swipe from the top left corner brings up the system menu and it looked to be fully populated. I saw tether but didn't notice bridge. It did look like the setup menu Kevin showed in a previous "tutorial". The background is now orange bubbles in the version I looked at (vs the Green background we saw in the sims).

David told me that this was only one of 30 devices out in public in Canada (which I assume includes the ones that Balsalie carries around). It was stamped with stickers on the back saying it was preproduction but other than that looked exactly like the ones in the videos we've seen. Overall the fit/finish was excellent and I was struck by the fact that it didn't seem much heavier than my Torch. I've spent a fair bit of time with my sister's iPad and this thing seems a LOT lighter. Using my sister's iPad is a two handed affair (one to hold, one to use) where this thing is definitely like the Torch... you hold it in portrait mode and can bang away with your thumb.

Stupidly (in retrospect), I didn't try the keyboard (other than to pull it out and push it back in with the swipe gesture and watch it come up as I clicked in an entry field) so I can't comment on how the typing 'feels' or whether it has left/right biased inputs like the Torch does (i.e. where you have to press further left on the buttons than you'd think if you were typing with your right hand). I've grown to quite like that "feature" but am not sure its really necessary on the PB as the keys are so much bigger anyway.

N4S looked great although I didn't spend anytime trying to figure out how to play it. I saw Tetris there but didn't try it. The Clock App looks very polished with different styles, alarm clock's etc. The guy told me that he wasn't allowed to show youtube so there may have been some issue there either with the Sears network config or with the PB sw.

It wasn't completely polished as it was fairly clear there were a few glitches here and there (orientation mainly) but if they can get those straightened out for launch, this is one solid device. It's not that hard to use if you have an OS6 device as its quite intuitive (but of course I know how to work the simulator so I'm coming with a headstart).

There was a few customers there when I showed up and another customer joined us when I had some hands on time with it. That customer had an iPad and his biggest concern was the compatibility of the 250K Android apps. I asked him how many he had on his iPad and got a blank look. I told him that the vendors would need to "sign" the apps on AppWorld but from my experience this was at most a few man hours of work and that I thought that any serious vendor would undertake to do this to open themselves up to a device that is projected to sell millions of copies to an app hungry audience. He seemed satisfied with that - and then bitched about how his iPad didn't do flash which is why he was so interested in this.

David asked me to send a few of my friends down, he was disappointed in the foot traffic at Sears on a Friday... so have at him guys and gals! He gave me the impression he was there tonight and tomorrow.

[mapsonburt]

A few more things I remembered... (wasn't expecting to review a device in person today so sorry I wasn't more prepared - I only had 3 minutes notice which is how long it took me to go down 6 flights of stairs!)

I saw the new AppWorld... looks very spiffy. I didn't browse through it unfortunately to see how many Apps were in there but the ones that were front and centre looked good. Looks to be a lot more useable than the AppWorld on the BlackBerry handsets.

Also got see the included travel case... neoprene (think modern wetsuit) so it'll definitely protect the device. He said it came with a charger but didn't think it came with an HDMI cable.

[smeagle5]

Thanks for the info. Might head down to the Eaton Centre Tmr! Im only two stops away.

[mkers21]

Can you comment on the actual size of the device? Coming from an iPad2 I'm conecerned its going to feel "too small"... but def hoping not...

[Qwest905]

if you find the ipad big than no you will not find it "too small"

[PDSchofield]

RIM guy wasnt around when I went through Sears, and I didnt wait on account of having a cold and frosty pint waiting for me...

In a way I think this is a good thing, a brief taste then 10 days of waiting would be torture...

[buckyball]

Do you know what time he'll be at Sears on Saturday? Also, what floor is he on?

[mapsonburt]

Do you know what time he'll be at Sears on Saturday? Also, what floor is he on?

Sorry, I don't know the times he'll be there. I should have asked but I was too busy playing with it. Its under the main floor. I think they call it -1. In the Electronics section.

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[mapsonburt]

Can you comment on the actual size of the device? Coming from an iPad2 I'm conecerned its going to feel "too small"... but def hoping not...

I don't believe it will be too small. It fit perfectly into my blazer inside chest pocket, into the side pockets and into my dress pant front pocket. Two reasons I didn't buy an iPad:
1) too big to use as an laptop replacement (IE if I'm going to drag that around I might as well drag aroumnd the Thinkpad too), and
2) didn't work on more than half of the sites I use daily.

I could add a bunch of others like lack of USB, Steve Jobs is an @sshole, and I don't want people thinking I'm one of those pathetic people who sleeps on a sidewalk to get one so I look cool, etc but those are my "showstoppers".

I really hope the PB doesn't have any showstoppers as I've been looking for something like this since the first multiline screen BLACKBERRY's.

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