Rim Jumps in Tablet Computer Market with PlayBook

Not one to be left behind, Rim made a play to make waves in the computer tablet market by introducing PlayBook, an new tablet that is aimed at both business users, as well as those who may be looking for some fun out of their tablet computer. The Playbook looks very similar to Apple's iPad computer, yet has some interesting differences under the hood. It feature multi-core processing under the hood, with an operating system that is optimized for multi-taking and multiple processors. Expect a hefty performance boost in the PlayBook over the iPad, and Apple is sure to take notice if it plans to continue to dominate the tablet computer market. The new operating system will be known as the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

Playbook Tablet PC Specs

PlayBook comes with a standard 7 inch touch screen, a front and rear facing camera. It features a 1GHz dual core processor and 1GB of Ram. The PlayBook will be available with either 16GB or 32GB. The PlayBook less then half an inch thick and weighs less than a pound.

The big surprise that comes with PlayBook is the operating system RIM is decided to install into the BlackBerry tablet. RIM selected the QNX Neutrino RTOS (Real Time Operating System) as the OS for PlayBook. RIM will call the operating system the BlackBerry Tablet OS. This operating system was selected as the replacement for RIM's Blackberry OS. RIM acquired QNX earlier in the year and look to make the QNX based operating system its flagship for all of its new products. It is unknown whether any of the current Blackberry applications will be available for the new Playbook, but full integration is available with the BlackBerry Server, which makes it a good bet that many, if not all, applications will be available. You can count on heavy software development in the coming months to meet the new demand.

QNX Operating System for Playbook
So Never, heard of QNX? It has been around for a long time and is just another a variant of a commercial Unix-based operating system. QNX has been used in nearly every type of computer, from little embedded chips, to larger main frame computers. The underlying architecture is imported from NetBSD.

There are some differences in how the kernel of QNX operates, making it stable, efficient, and secure operating system that can handle multi-tasking, and multiple jobs.

QNX should be able to handling the multi-core processors that the new RIM Playbook is running. In fact, expect much better speed performance over the iPad, which only features a single core processor that is similar to an ARM processor. The Playbook will also support Adobe Flash, HTML5, Shockwave, Java, and any type of media found on the Internet, placing it another leg up on its iPad competitor.

Apple is hoping to introduce a new version iPad either at the end of the year, or at the start of next year. Heavy competition is starting to enter the market, and Apple will need to make another marketing splash with its new upgrade in order to stay ahead of the pack.