As earlier reports said, RIM's tablet won't have its own 3G cellular connection, but will rely on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to access the Web. It could be, as implied earlier, that the Blackpad will be a type of companion device for BlackBerry, using Bluetooth to share a BlackBerry's 3G connection to get on the Web. In that case, the Blackpad is more of a competitor to the iPad model with Wi-Fi only, and not the 3G-ready version.

So RIM is planning an iPad killer that will probably have only one significant effect -- it'll kill any remaining hope anyone out there that the moniker "-pad" would not come to identify the category. Looks like the name is sticking.

On one hand, this reminds me of the Palm Foleo, a netbook-like device that was announced and then killed by Palm back before the Netbook craze took off. I was excited about the Foleo -- it was a companion device for a Palm OS phone that could surf the web, access the phone's e-mail (for composing and replying), sync documents and it was instant-on/instant-off. I was flying a fair bit back when it came out and I looked forward to the possibility of leaving the laptop at home.