The BlackBerry PlayBook

From the day Research in Motion announced the PlayBook tablet, I planned on getting one. I'm a strong proponent of their products.

Some 7 months after that initial announcement, this striking piece of trivia has me all the more gung-ho about the PlayBook:

"RIM didn't make the decision on size lightly. Todd Wood, vice president of industrial design, and his team studied the optimal proportions for a tablet while Lazaridis weighed what format would offer a screen big enough for watching video and could pack a powerful processor, and remain portable. The inspiration for the final size was decidedly low-tech: the Moleskine leather notebooks used by Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway.

"'It's an iconic form factor,' Wood said in an interview. 'There's the science part of it that led them to 7 inches and we took the human factor side and in the end agreed very quickly.'"

Source: Bloomberg

I pack a Moleskine during my travels, but I seldom use it because my handwriting's so awful. It'd be a waste of a quality notebook. The PlayBook? Yeah, I'll be able to use that bad boy on the road.

While on the subject of BlackBerry, here's my take on the BlackBerry Torch.