As I recently updated the operating system on my Blackberry Playbook, I reflected on how I’ve made peace with the tablet. I’d say that peace came from lowering my expectations.
For the background on my love/hate relationship with the Playbook, read this post on my former blog.
I’ve since updated to the latest release of the Playbook OS (2.1.0.1526 as of this post), and the glitch that kept me from reading emails sent to my Blackberry phone has been resolved. I also can log into my work’s wifi network after getting a tip about disabling bluetooth prior to logging in. (I restart bluetooth after logging in, to link the tablet with my phone.)
The tablet’s poorly designed onscreen keyboard still frustrates me as I have to toggle between letters and numbers on separate screens. I also dislike being unable to sort images by date, meaning that whenever I want to view a recent photo, I have to spin down screen after screen of saved photos to get to the recent ones.
The tablet’s larger screen is better than the phone when I need to use the calendar or lookup a contact. The browser is quick, but it can’t handle certain sites like Hootsuite. For example, I have several columns set up for direct messages and search terms like #iabc12. I can’t move across the screen cleanly to see columns to the right of the current view. Hard to explain, but maybe I’ll make a video and post it.
Still, I use the Playbook every day. It has become useful enough that I forgive its faults…for now.
