[johbuc]

Hi All,

Just got my playbook today - MAJOR PROBLEM - how do I get it working in SA??? I went the same route as LadyAth - but now I cant get past the "connect to WI-FI" select a network page......................



Please help,

Keep well,

Johbuc

[mitchellk]

Hi Johbuc, I'm in SA and have a Playbook too. The first steps, opening the box (grinning from ear to ear) and then starting to set it up can be frustrating to say the least and I have raised the issue with RIM on their blog already.

The problem is, and I don't need to tell you this, in South Africa we're not all sitting with high speed lines into our houses and those of us that do have broadband access are usually stuck with a plethora of crappy ISP's in SA who cannot run anything smoothly.

Unfortunately my grinning from ear to ear after unboxing the Playbook was short lived because there it came up with the WIFI connect and luckily I had a WIFI network to connect to (also something that not everyone has). This was done at my parents house who have MWEB ADSL. It then proceeded to force me to get the latest 1.05 update. The first attempt at downloading this failed at 10% and the Playbook then asked me to restart and try again .... so I restarted and once it loaded up it once again started the download from 0%. This time it took a painful 3 and a half hours to get to 91% before dying on me again ..... I then decided to call it quits and take the Playbook home with me to do the update over Vodacom HSDPA. I got home and started the update which this time took only 13 minutes and voila the playbook was functional.

What annoys me though, and I have raised this on RIM's blogs is:
- that they have absolutely no resume support for downloads that stop halfway
- they have no CRC checking on downloaded files
- they have no mirrors in SA for Appworld, even though Vodacom is now Vodafone "an official RIM supplier"

My answer to your problem is to get to somewhere where they have WIFI and a High-Speed connection and get the update done super fast and then you can start using your Playbook.

Once you get past that point I'm sure you're gonna LOVE it, I do, I think it's the greatest tablet I've ever worked with and I'm glad I personally held back on buying myself a tablet for so long. What I love about it is how it becomes an extension of your Blackberry phone, the Bridge software works like a charm. RIM has been forthcoming with updates and enhancements for the Playbook and they are listening to what people are saying on their blog.

Hope you manage to come right, perhaps pop into a friends house or an Internet cafe?

PS - The OS updates are around 320 Mb each time

[CreativeMinds87]

I usually buy the MTN 1 day bolt on bundle on my bb, its uncapped for 24 hours, the speed is obviously pathetic but at least it gets the updates done on my pb. And sometimes I have some time left to download some stuff from app world too lol