The initial PlayBook models will only be equipped with Wi-Fi, and will be unable to sync data with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) at all. However, with the PlayBook, tethering with a BlackBerry smartphone isn’t just a feature, it’s a necessity. The BlackBerry tethering feature is sort of cool–being able to sync email and use the PlayBook as a larger external display for a BlackBerry smartphone (although not much larger as we just got done talking about).
With a tablet like the iPad 2 or Xoom, there is at least enough screen real estate to take on some productivity tasks, but a tablet like the BlackBerry PlayBook is more like an oversized smartphone than a slim notebook and is too small to accomplish much more than you can with many smartphones. The jury is still out and there is plenty of passionate debate over whether the tablet can fill the role of mobile computing platform in place of a notebook PC.
