BlackBerry PlayBook price slashed by $150 at Best Buy

Last month Best Buy appeared to be complaining that its stockrooms were full of unsold Hewlett-Packard TouchPads. A few days later HP announced it was ending tablet and smartphone production. The price of the TouchPad was then slashed to virtually nothing, resulting in the devices flying off the shelves in a matter of hours.

Could it be that all the space taken up the TouchPads has now been filled with similarly slow-selling BlackBerry PlayBooks? The reason fir this suggestion is because Best Buy knocked $150 off the cost of the 64GB version in a sale, bringing it down to $550 from a hefty $700.

The 16GB and 32GB versions have been discounted too, by $50, giving them price tags of $450 and $550 respectively. The 32GB PlayBook is now at the same price as the 64GB device – $550. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone out there who won't prefer the 64GB version.”

Research In Motion’s PlayBook has had something of a rough ride since its launch in April this year. Reviews have been mixed, while just a month after appearing on shelves, almost 1,000 of the tablets had to be recalled due to unspecified faulty hardware issues.

The Canadian company has also been having a hard time persuading networks to carry the device. Just last month Sprint announced that it was scrapping plans to bring the 4G PlayBook to its network. It is currently with no major US carriers.

RIM will be hoping the sale price will shift a few more of the devices. And Best Buy will certainly be happy to have some more stockroom space available.

BlackBerry Playbook to sell at $499

Research In Motion has announced that its much-awaited iPad rival, the BlackBerry PlayBook, will sell at a starting price of $499 in the United States and Canada and will be available in more than 20,000 retail outlets.

RIM plans to sell the PlayBook through retailers and wireless carriers including Best Buy, AT&T, Verizon, Radioshack, Sears Canada and Walmart.

Best Buy said the PlayBook will be available at its stores from April 19.

RIM PlayBook gets 7digital music store

Blackberry-maker Research In Motion will release its long-awaited PlayBook tablet computer with Britain's 7digital music store.

The music store of 7digital, half-owned by HMV, which has some 13 million tracks, will be pre-installed on the tablet at its launch in the United States and Canada, with further international roll out in 2011.

The PlayBook, set for launch in March, was first announced in September last year, and will now join a booming market dominated by Apple's iPad and compete for attention with tablets from the likes of Samsung, Motorola Mobility and Hewlett-Packard.

RIM unveils the BlackBerry PlayBook

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is taking on iPad in the table computer game with a "PlayBook" aimed to capitalize on its strength.

RIM is calling its 7-inch, camera-packing tablet the BlackBerry PlayBook. CEO, Mike Lazaridis showed off the long-rumored device during the keynote of RIM’s BlackBerry developer conference in San Francisco.

RIM says its new tablet will arrive in the U.S. in early 2011, and in overseas markets in the second quarter of next year.

Expectations are a 0.9-pound tablet that’s 9.7 mm (or 0.4 inch) thick, complete with a pair of cameras: a 5-megapixel camera in the back, and a 3MP lens in front, both capable of recording HD video.

The 7 inch display - the same size as that on the just-announced Samsung Galaxy Tab - will boast a resolution of 1024 by 600, and it’s a capacitive multitouch display, good for such multi-finger gestures as punching and zooming.

The "no-compromises" PlayBook will run on a new tablet OS designed by QNX Software Systems which RIM acquired back in April, and it’ll be powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor, complete with a whopping 1GB of onboard RAM. The PlayBook will also support multitasking and Flash as well as multimedia-friendly HTML5 Web standards.

The PlayBook will arrive with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, with both 3G and 4G versions coming "in the future”. The PlayBook will also connect to a nearby BlackBerry via Bluetooth for viewing e-mail, calendar, to-do items or contacts - meaning that you’ll be able to tap out messages on the PlayBook and fire them off from your handheld BlackBerry.

We can also expect "nonproprietary" microUSB and micro-HDMI ports, with the PlayBook capable of outputting full-on 1080p video via HDMI, RIM says.

A slick promo video for the PlayBook shows features such as tabbed browsing, an app task bar, threaded messaging, on-the-Web YouTube video, and tablet-sized e-mail and event interfaces - all very iPad-like, with the added twist of the PlayBook acting as a BlackBerry companion in addition to a stand-alone slate.

But we’ll have to wait for more details on the BlackBerry PlayBook until the tablet’s launch date which is un-announced yet.