[drwggm]

I'm in same boat as OP. Was plenty patient for BB/RIM to get their **** in gear (BB10, better android support, more apps), but now I've moved on. I bought a cheap android tablet that was on sale, and am more than happy with the decision. GL to BB, as I used to live in Waterloo, but I was not too happy with my one and only experience with them.

[KermEd]

Well,

Last night besides playing xcom for a few hours (you can do this on the PB via dosbox too) I managed to get a lot of coding and design work done too.

On a plus note - its paying off well. The only annoying part is hosting all my source code somewhere accessible to all my machines while being mobile conscious. Although in hindsight I should start utilizing my private github... but I'd rather replicate the data to my own data servers at home.

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[jpash549]

For me, a 7-inch device should focus on battery life. I'm a bit skeptical of the Iconia W3's 7-hour battery life figure when playing video - Wi-fi is probably off and screen brightness at the lowest setting. Video decode usually involves only a few GPU parts while shutting down most of the CPU so it's not very power intensive.

We need a figure for working with office documents with Wi-fi on occasionally. The iPad Mini goes for 10 hours or more for this, the PlayBook lasts about 7 hours.

The apps available on the PB are really stripped down for working with office docs and spreadsheets.They may be better on the iPad mini but still not real office apps. There are complaints about battery life on the mini and still would like to see actual test data for each device.

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[MrRtic]

Hummm...good for you, good move.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

This thread shows why BBRY needs a tablet.

We are a LONG way from cheap wireless screens that some believe will make tablets and laptops obsolete and suddenly BlackBerry's will rule the world.

Today people need tools to get work done, or to enjoy themselves playing a game or to be able to keep in contact with friends. If BBRY doesn't have a tablet today, then people will go else where. And those "other" tablets have ecosystem that people will get invested in, and they also have smartphones that use those same ecosystems. The OP is getting a Windows Tablet, very soon a windows tablet, a windows desktop and a windows phone are all going to look and work the same. That is something that business and consumers are going to be interested in.

I imagine this will happen before HTML5 and wireless screens become the norm. So for now BBRY needs a tablet at least for their business customers.

[Bakamushi]

I already got an android tab last year.

However I had to give it away and just ordered a new one (with 3G).

One thing I can say, after trying a number of tablets, is that the playbook is still top quality sturdy, whereas some superior and more recent hardware android tablets are built like children toys.

Tablets tend to fall, even if you are careful they CAN fall one day, so I would encourage everyboy to look for a tablet with the same metallic sturdiness as the playbook.

Take something metallic, not something that looks like it has a metallic frame around it, which is in fact cheap plastic. Nope, I won't tell the name of the company

[Dave Bourque]

Apple?

Sent from my BB10 smartphone.

[Mr.Willie]

Certainly right to be sceptical about battery life on any tab. The w3 has two batteries with each probably rated at 3500 ampere hours which would caculate to 25.9 watt hours as compared to 42.9 for the iPad3, 25 for the iPad2, 16.5 for the iPad min, 19.95 for the PB and 43 for the surface pro. The screen area is about the same as the iPad mini. With the w3 one can work on an office document with wifi off- potentially a big advantage and a real power saver possibly. Incidentally what is the battery life data for working with a microsoft office document in cloud fashion on the iPad mini?

First MS Office 365 is not cloud only. Second, I get 14 plus hours of usage a charge on my iPad 4. I hardly ever turn wifi off, except when traveling, and most of the time I forget anyway. (You can view your usage in the settings menue.) Third, wouldn't that be the same issue with the Icona ? Fourth, yes, a 32 gig full Windows 8 tablet will be great. Especially with the 8.1" widescreen.

[bbquincar]

It sucks the playbook is not my main source now that i have a Z10 but i still use it once in a while. If BB10 comes out for it I may get another year of use of it.

Maybe BlackBerry will will do an exchange program and give us all new up to date oPlaybook for lasting this long. lol

[Blacklac]

As someone with a Windows Phone and a Playbook, I'm jealous.

I'd trade my tablet for a Surface Pro and phone for a Z10/A10 in a heartbeat. I just wish I could afford a Surface Pro...

[jpash549]

First MS Office 365 is not cloud only. Second, I get 14 plus hours of usage a charge on my iPad 4. I hardly ever turn wifi off, except when traveling, and most of the time I forget anyway. (You can view your usage in the settings menue.) Third, wouldn't that be the same issue with the Icona ? Fourth, yes, a 32 gig full Windows 8 tablet will be great. Especially with the 8.1" widescreen.

Since I don't have an iPad mini I can't personally run a battery test on it such as streaming video over and over or some other standardized form of test to allow more accurate comparison of battery life between tablet brands.

Perhaps I am not up to date on what Microsoft has provided for use of Office 365 on iPads. Can you edit and create documents on the iPad 4 offline using Microsoft Word and Excel? It was my understanding that with a new app you would be able to connect to your cloud MS 365 Office account and work that way. The Microsoft Office Programs are not resident on the Arm processor iPad. There may be other programs which allow you to view, edit and create documents which can be read into Microsoft Office but at least for BBPB Docs to Go they tend to have significant limitations.

The Acer Iconia W3 has an Intel atom processor and the Office programs are actually loaded into the memory storage so you do not have to e connected to wireless to create and edit files. The Atom processor is not as strong as the i5 used in the Surface pro and runs 32 bit programs but this should not be a problem with most office work.

Lastly just having your wireless on is not much of a power user. When it is sending and receiving data is when it can eat up your battery.

Next year the promise of greater capability and power saving capability of the new Haswell chip architecture may be realized with much improved Windows mobile devices.

[KermEd]

Oh the surface battery life isn't great. It's about 4-5 hours. And it's a heavy beast.

But it's really just a touchscreen ultra book.

I virtualize Mac OS at home for iOS development. Our iPad 2 is a lot of fun. But the iPad is on par with the PlayBook --- it wasn't going to get me any closer to creating apps.

If the PlayBook could have run the programming languages itself (i miss the days when all devices could build apps for themselves on device) I would still be using it.. Next gen maybe!!

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