RIM Playbook, BlackBerry Could Use Better Spokesmen than Lazardis

In defense of Lazardis, the questions asked by the BBC reporter were at the very least pretty dumb questions. There the reporter equated the BlackBerry's virtually uncrackable encryption as a "security issue." I hate to break this to the Beeb, however really good encryption is a very good thing. It's something that other smartphones don't in effect have and they actually need. The fact that some governments don't like not being able to spy on their citizens might be a political problem, yet it's not a security issue.

Now, at the end of the week, it seems that RIM is catching grief for the software-or lack thereof-on the new PlayBook. At heart, the device doesn't have its own email, contacts, calendar or other basic BlackBerry capabilities. The idea with the PlayBook is that you're supposed to link the device with your BlackBerry smartphone and the two devices will do some sort of mind meld, and shazam, the tablet will have mail, contacts and calendar courtesy of the smartphone.

The PlayBook doesn't fit that standard

The PlayBook doesn't fit that standard, and as a result it's getting some criticism. The big items are the lack of email, contacts, calendar, etc., that the smartphone has. Co-CEO Balsillie has said that criticism of that deficiency is unfair. But to tell the truth it's not. If you plan to use a PlayBook to its full capability, you have to have both the BlackBerry smartphone and the PlayBook. This in turn means you need to drop a lot of dollars on the deal.

Sure, you can probably get the smartphone for a hundred dollars or so and, realistically, it's not going to cost you any more to use a BlackBerry than it does other smartphones.