BlackBerry PlayBook Goes On Sale

Tweet

Just like Robert told you about yesterday, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is now on sale in the US and Canada from various outlets. RIM is billing the tablet as the world’s first professional grade tablet. Let’s run down what it’s offering, how much you can expect to pay, and where to get it.

The BlackBerry PlayBook is offering a 1GHz dual-core processor, as well as 1GB of RAM. It’s got a 7-inch screen, and will come in three different memory sizes, 16, 32 or 64GB. I got to spend time with the device at CES, and it seemed suitably powerful and had the best multitasking I’ve seen yet on a mobile operating system.

Instead of running the old BlackBerry OS, the folks at RIM have done the right thing and are having QNX make a new operating system for the tablet. QNX is a company that makes in-car entertainment software, and their software is extremely stable. They were purchased by RIM a while back, but they’re still going to continue making in-car entertainment systems in addition to making the operating system for BlackBerry tablets, which is now being aptly called the BlackBerry Tablet OS or something similar. Back at CES, they were just calling it QNX OS.

Pricing is fairly regular for what we’ve come to expect from tablets – $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model and $699 for the 64GB model. You can find them at a number of shops, like Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples, Office Max and Radio Shack. But, RIM themselves is even selling the PlayBook directly to customers via BlackBerry.com – though when I went to their online store, the page was slow, probably due to demand.

Are you planning to pick up a BlackBerry PlayBook? Already got yours picked out? Tell us about it in the comments section.