The decision is heartbreaking, because, for all of the PlayBook's crushing lows, there are just as many amazing highs. When everything's working, the PlayBook experience blows the iPad out of the water. The problem is getting to that point.

To be clear, I'm not writing a thorough PlayBook review. I didn't get a loaner from Research in Motion, and I don't intend to pour over every minute detail. What I can provide is the perspective of someone who spent his own money on the product, who doesn't own a Blackberry phone and who, after owning an iPad since launch day, is still enamored with the idea of a 7-inch tablet.

I was before launch, largely because of its interface. Navigation is controlled by swipes from the bezel--swipe up to conjure the home screen, swipe down to open a menu, swipe sideways for fast app switching--and multitasking is as close to a computer as you're going to get. By default, apps freeze when they're not in the foreground, but you can toggle an option to let them to run at full capacity in the background.

This is awesome. While one app loads, you can do something in another, and small size of the tablet allows you to quickly switch back and forth between apps with thumb swipes. Last night, I watched a video on ComedyCentral.com (because the PlayBook runs Adobe Flash), and switched to the Kobo e-reader app during commercials while the audio played in the background. In terms of navigating from one app to the next, the PlayBook has no equal.

But those moments of tablet euphoria are hard to find, and that's largely because the PlayBook has hardly any apps. I'm not an app junkie. I can get by with a decent Twitter client, an e-mail app, some premium video sources and a few really good games. The PlayBook, as it stands, has none of those things, except for Tetris. And without a video chat app like Skype or Fring, you can't even take full advantage of the PlayBook's front-facing camera. The apps that are available have crashed on occasion.