First Tablet Certified For U.S. Government 'RIM BlackBerry PlayBook'

You may not think so from my last post Playbook BlackBerry, but I really like the device and think it has the potential to become one of the best tablets available. I bought one the day of release, has just finished writing a BlackBerry Wiley Companion Playbook, and I'm still seriously considering buying the BlackBerry Bold 9900 when it launched the new BlackBerry smartphone. RIM announced that the guidelines were first certified tablets for the U.S. government.

RIM launches BlackBerry Playbook with support for personal data / business / government only available through a Bluetooth connection with your BlackBerry smartphone. This upset some people and disappointed too because I do not have a smartphone BB itself. However, these strict controls on the data may help RIM get a FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) certification from NIST and now we can see the BlackBerry tablet Playbook appear in the hands of federal government employees.

I served in the U.S. Coast Guard for 12 years and would love to have a large screen tablet to go along with my mobile phone to be checked more easily and edit the data on the go. We have not seen any announcement for a large government orders, but now with FIPS certification they may come and it would be a good time for RIM to continue to improve the guidelines through a software update.

Guidelines for BlackBerry also just won Best in Show and Best of FOSE in the category of handheld devices on the federal government information technology conference in DC this week. RIM advertises guidelines as the world's first professional grade tablets and the certification of this award and help support that claim.