Don't think you can go online with a Blackberry Playbook outside of a wifi zone without a Blackberry phone, the bridge software they use is unique to Blackberry which is also one of the drawbacks of the Playbook. Also its only a 7 inch screen, we tried one as we both have Blackberrys. Then we just acted like sheep and bought an ipad2 3G.
If I hadn't been so locked in with itunes etc I would have got a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and for what you suggest you will use it for I still would seriously look at that option unless you really must have the lastest OS ie, Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich pre-loaded. My checklist for an Android pad is quite short:
10 inch screen with decent brightness.
Android Honeycomb ie, v3.0
Decent storage capacity
Or just be a sheep and wait to see what the iPad 3 looks like when it launches on the 7th March
