[cowgirl05]

A friend was showing me her new Nook Color, which she said she had gotten an upgrade so it now functioned like a Nook Tablet. You can browse the web do e-mail, watch video, listen to music and read & buy books. It has an expansion slot to add a SD card.
What is the difference between a e-reader like this, or the Kobo Vox and a PlayBook? Mind you I haven't seen the PlayBook in person, or the Kobo Vox, just read about them on the web and am trying to decide which would be better. Mostly I just want it to read and store books, but being able to do those other things would be nice.

The Playbook doesn't have an SD slot, but I think it does have BBM.

So what would be the difference? Thank you!

[hrbuckley]

No native BBM for PlayBook yet, you have to Bridge to a BlackBerry smart phone for that. I'm speculating that we won't see BBM on the PlayBook until BB 10 is released.

That said the difference between a PlayBook and the tablet based E-book readers is one of speed and flexibility. An E-book reader with a battery life of a few hours of reading isn't very satisfying. So they tend to be built around lower powered (slower CPUs, fewer cores) devices.

A tablet that is sold as a tablet and not an E-book reader will be built for faster browsing, more demanding applications (like games, or office applications). That is a trade off where battery life is sacrificed for performance. Some tablets are very good at managing this compromise. The first iPad was famous for this. Most (if not all) tablets on the market will have E-book reader software. The PlayBook ships with the Kobo reader (though it isn't very good) but there are other options. Some people are happy reading Amazon books using the web browser for example.

This is really a personal choice and you need to test drive the hardware before you make a choice. Personally I have an e-ink reader (Sony PRS-600) that I read books on, and a PlayBook that I do tablet stuff on. I can read my books from Kobo on either, but I prefer the Sony.

[cowgirl05]

I just wanted to thank you again for the info. I bought the PlayBook and I do LOVE it! I admit, the battery life is far different from my plain Kobo reader, but could be cause I can't resist watching the video of my horse on it quite often. I love the Kobo reader app it came with, it works great and I bought a ereader app(epub I think) that allows me to put my non-kobo books on it's self. Found out how to sync the playbook with linux over wireless. I am really happy with my PlayBook. I think I haven't been disappointed by anything because you gave me such a good idea of what to expect and what it would be like. The BB PlayBook is just great!

[hrbuckley]

Glad to hear you are happy with your purchase.

[knottyrope]

There are 5 playbooks in my family now. Is a nice device that can do more than read books.

My son's friend has asked about getting a Playbook, claims playbook is lighter and easier to hold. he is 7 and loves the games my son has.

vid chat with grandma and auntie is great

its a shame it wasnt marketed better, it is a nice tablet and more apps are coming every day. I allow an app a week if my kids behave.

Today my son took his playbook and connected it via HDMI to the tv to watch a movie I put on it for him.

[John Clark]

I agree with Knotty...I don't own an e-reader but have an iPad2 and a Playbook. I much prefer the Playbook. Part of RIM's problem was marketing but also not launching the tablet with all the options that OS 2.0 brought to the table.

I was very late to the Playbook game but I have not been disappointed other than the lack of apps out there, but as Knotty says, that is changing. I have even figured out how to download Android apps, convert them with the developer software and run them on my Playbook. I'm getting closer to having everything my iPad has.

John

[hrbuckley]

And it will only get better. I managed to qualify for a Dev Alpha when I attended the BB10 Jam in Toronto. It is amazing how easy it is to write applications for Cascades that have an amazing look and feel.

Some developers there built an application using HTML5 to prototype it. But after running it started to think that there was no need to port it to Native because HTML5 was very fast. If RIM can just keep the wolves at bay long enough to bring BB10 to market we should see some great stuff.