Brief Impressions of the BlackBerry PlayBook (and some other tablets)

Medgadget editor Dan Buckland, a medical student at Harvard, is looking for a perfect educational tablet…
I spent some time in the last couple of days trying out some of the new tablets that have recently came out. I will be starting my 3rd year of medical school this summer and am looking for a tablet to purchase to use on the wards for reference (i.e. Epocrates, Up To Date, Unbound Medicine, etc..), shelf exam preparation (either stand alone apps or PDF versions of books), EMR access (through the hospital VPN), and on-the-go note writing for when I don’t have time to sit at a desktop computer. I’d also like it to be able to play the NEJM how-to videos for learning procedures. The tablet has to be fairly robust to take a couple low force jolts during a working day, and flexible enough to be useful regardless of the rotation I’m on.

I also need something small enough to fit in a white coat or scrub pocket, so the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom are out. Based on the selection at my local mall, this leaves the recently released BlackBerry PlayBook and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. (I also looked at a friend’s rooted Barnes and Noble nookColor, which basically acts as a slower but cheaper Android Tablet that does not yet run the latest version of the Android operating system. For the purposes of this discussion, it acts like the Galaxy Tab but slightly slower.)
There are other reviews out there about the capabilities and specs of the Galaxy Tab and the PlayBook, but I’m just going to discuss my thinking on how they felt in-hand and whether I would buy one.
Right off the bat the Playbook felt like an actual tool and met my expectation for build quality. The rubber-like backing seemed pretty robust and slip resistant as well. In comparison, the Tab felt “plasticy” and not as well balanced. On both devices I could pull up web-based mail and the interface for the hospital VPN (but didn’t login) and both could open PDFs and access Up To Date. The Galaxy Tab has access to the Android App store, so medical apps present there should be able to be loaded. The PlayBook, since it just debuted, has almost no medical apps.
Between the two, I liked the PlayBook hardware and performance much more, but its software deficiency prevent me from buying it now. A principle of gadget purchasing is that you buy the gadget that exists, not what it will be. Currently, the Playbook has no relevant apps, and since I am on AT&T and they have not approved PlayBook tethering, there is no email or calendar support. $500 is a bit much for a mobile wi-fi web browser that can store pictures and PDFs, regardless of how much I like the form factor it comes in.