The Bold 9900 is offered for $300+$18 upgrade fee, and of course tax, for TMO subscribers. I think that is way too high for upgrade pricing. All of these devices come and go too quick. So, I spent the $300 on the Playbook and got a lot more for my money. The only thing missing was the ability to make phone calls. That's where the 9360 curve came into the picture, to mate with the PB. My upgrade pricing leaves me with a final $106 for the 9360 after rebate.
The PB was exactly $299 + nothing. For a grand total of $406, I ended up with two of the latest BB products. Since I have so much equipment to carry for work as a field service engineer, the size, power, and value for this pair makes for an outstanding deal!!! I love how thin and light the new curve is, and for me the keyboard on it is great.
I had bridged the playbook for about two weeks to my unlocked 9530 I was using on TMO and even that worked fairly well, for when I had no WiFi access. It is considerably better and faster when bridged to the 9360 3G.
To have a tablet of these hardware specs and its capability, and not have the need for built in 3G + another data plan is tremendous in my opinion! Bridging was a brilliant idea as well. Perhaps seen as a band aid at first, it's anything but. It's effortless, and when disconnected all personal contacts and email are gone with it. Using the playbook at times as an external extension of your BB or just for a quick connection is phenomenal. When on a WiFi network, it's one powerful microcomputer. I'm not really sure native email and contacts are even necessary. Why sync when you can have it all in one place? And then not. Its web browsing is truly the only tablet I have seen that comes close to the regular desktop web browsing we all know.
For anyone sitting on the fence, it is truly a nice combination you won't regret. I spent weeks thinking about it and even let the Black Friday sales go by.
The shopblackberry.com sale ends tomorrow, Sat 1/28/12 for anyone interested and some of the stores may continue until stock is depleted. You can still get the 64GB for only $299.