PlayBook Offers Productivity Boost for Virtual Office Workers

Another day, another tablet announcement. This time it’s BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion. RIM is making a bold move into the market with the BlackBerry Playbook featuring the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

The PlayBook is a seven-inch, touchscreen tablet with features like Web browsing, multitasking, high performance multimedia, security features, enterprise support, and a new development platform for IT departments and developers.

The PlayBook is less than half an inch thick and weighs less than a pound. It features a 1 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB RAM, dual HD cameras, video and audio playback, HDMI video output, both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and application support for a wide range of software.

There’s no news on exactly when the PlayBook will be available or how much it cost—or even what the user experience is like. But for BlackBerry lovers, the PlayBook may be a natural extension of their smartphone.

As I said yesterday, the world is going mobile, virtual and global—and let me add that virtual offices are increasingly going mobile. Like Sharp, RIM is tapping into the demand for virtual office technologies and mobile devices that help people work smarter, faster and more efficiently. The RIM device may have an advantage with virtual office users and road warriors because BlackBerry is such a well-loved brand in companies large and small. You can’t beat it for e-mail.

For road warriors, tablet devices and virtual office software like Siri Virtual Assistant, Google Apps, Citrix Online and other collaboration software, can drive up productivity. I am not sure what we did before we had e-mail and virtual offices. One day, we’ll look back and wonder what we did without the virtual office technologies that are increasingly making their way to market.

Check out this video on the RIM PlayBook for yourself:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJWjzNpLu0[/youtube]

About Jennifer LeClaire

Jennifer LeClaire is a veteran business journalist, editor and new media entrepreneur with a strong niche in real estate and technology.