In a research note issued this morning, Peter Misek of Jeffries said early indications from retailers and others point toward pent-up demand for the device. “We were optimistic about the PlayBook but were still surprised at how positive the feedback has been from the channel and retailers regarding the product,” he writes. “Many view the tethering as a positive since it does not require a separate data plan, and enterprises see it as an easy fit into their existing security and device management protocols.”

Misek, too, expects the PlayBook to launch in April. And he doesn’t seem much bothered by predictions that it will be “dead on arrival.” The PlayBook isn’t going to be a flop, he said. And there are four reasons why:

1. It’s effectively a PC category player. Therefore any sales are incremental and importantly create new avenues of growth and expansion.
2. It’s been a success with enterprises that have trialed it.
3. Its lack of native calendar and email applications isn’t the deficit that it’s been made out to be, since accessing those functions from a browser as one might do on a PC is logical and easy.
4. It will account for far less than 10 percent of sales and earnings in even the most optimistic models on the Street.

Plausible reasons, certainly. But ones potentially subsumed by a few remaining wild cards Misek doesn’t note: price (not specified beyond RIM’s co-CEO’s claim of “under $500″), battery life (also not yet specified), the size of the PlayBook’s app ecosystem (will it support Android apps?) and the breadth of its distribution channel.

A scathing appraisal, but Blair has his reasons.

• The PlayBook’s lack of native calendar and email applications, a core RIM strength that has oddly been left out of the device’s first iteration.
• The need to tether it to a BlackBerry to access those applications, a feature intended to appeal to enterprise by obviating the need for additional security measures, but one that will inevitably alientate non-BlackBerry users.
• A profound lack of applications and a sub-par application storefront.
• No easy mechanism for content delivery and consumption. “How will users get music or movies on there?” Blair asks. “Through the BlackBerry Desktop download manager? Well, we have tried this and it isn’t easy.”

(Considered drag-and-drop, Brian? Not the most elegant solution, I know, but a solution nonetheless).

These are the makings of a sharply inferior tablet, Blair argues. To launch it in a market alongside the likes of the iPad and its successor, as well as with forthcoming offerings from HP’s Palm unit and Motorola, is folly.

“The PlayBook demo impresses many people, including many tech writers, and we believe it’s because of the outstanding multitasking capability that is showcased in a coverflow manner,” Blair concludes. “This slickly shows apps running in the background while a main app runs in the foreground. While we agree this is a leap over what other tablet operating systems can do, we see it as a visual ‘smoke and mirrors’ because of the aforementioned shortfalls in getting content onto the device, offering limited applications, and excluding a native email application. In short, the PlayBook’s screen and hardware specs and multitasking capability look excellent on paper, but without the other pieces to the puzzle, it feels in many ways like an expensive web browser.”

It has given wireless carriers in the country the ability to intercept messages sent over its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) if requested by the government. “The lawful access capability now available to RIM’s carrier partners meets the standard required by the government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace,” RIM said in a customer update.

Well, not quite.

The Indian government also wants access to communications sent over RIM’s corporate service. The company hasn’t yet provided that and continues to argue that it’s impossible to do so.

“No changes can be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers since, contrary to any rumors, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers’ encryption keys,” RIM explained in its customer update.

In other words, the solution RIM has provided is a partial one. It still hasn’t met one of the Indian government’s key demands. Will this concession on BBM and BIS be enough to mollify it?

The event, at the Marriott Copley Place downtown, is just getting under way. I won’t bore you with every detail, but will post whenever things get interesting.

In the meantime, enjoy this take on Angry Birds for the BlackBerry.

Update, 10:17 am ET: The intro is still going on. RIM Vice President Alec Taylor is talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis for some reason. However, RIM was nice enough to pass out slides for the whole day. Here are some of the highlights:

BlackBerry Mobile Voice System
Launching in early 2011, this is an update to RIM’s effort to unify the desk and mobile phone, offering a single identity, voiceover Wi-Fi calling, a single voicemail box, dialing office extensions and more. RIM says the new version will support more types of business phone systems.

Other features coming later this year include automatic hand-off from Wi-Fi to mobile networks, a “move call from desk” feature and more.

BlackBerry Balance
A new effort to support mixing personal and corporate data on the BlackBerry. RIM is adding features such as the ability for IT to choose to wipe only corporate information from a device or to limit users from cutting work data and pasting it into a personal application or email. Other features include warnings when sending emails or calendar invites outside of the organization, the ability to encrypt media cards and options for preventing access to work data by third-party applications.

BlackBerry client for Microsoft SharePoint
Launching in early 2011, this will bring data from Microsoft’s portal software directly to BlackBerry handhelds. It will work with both the 2007 and 2010 versions of SharePoint and integrates into a number of BlackBerry programs, including E-mail, calendar, Documents To Go and the browser.

PlayBook
As for the forthcoming tablet, RIM says it will ship with 1GB of memory, have 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash memory, include a 3-megapixel front-facing and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and have micro USB and Micro HDMI ports. (I can’t remember if they have said all of that before.) The slides say only that it will ship this quarter and will be “competitively priced,” reiterating past company positioning.

According to the slides, the company also plans to talk about cloud-based device management and changes to allow one BlackBerry server to support multiple corporations.

10:35 am ET: The Cuban Missile Crisis is apparently over, and VP Pete Devenyi is now outlining the company’s business product road map and making the pitch for its strategy.

“We really do have a great story,” he says, noting that the enterprise is different from the “arms race” of the consumer market.

“It’s not just about the number of apps in App world,” he says, noting that businesses can and are building programs just for use within the corporation. Some businesses, he says, have hundreds of internal apps, none of which show up in the public storefront. BlackBerry, he says, also allows businesses better control than rivals over what programs are on a worker’s device. For example, Devenyi says, when workers change groups within a company, the programs they have access to can be updated automatically with programs deleted and added from their devices.

“That kind of power is power that no one else has,” he says. “We don’t read about that much.”

10:43 am: In addition to both the paid BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the slimmed-down free “Express” version of the server, RIM plans to launch an email system aimed directly at small-to-midsize businesses–MDaemon Messaging Server, BlackBerry Edition. The idea is to give smaller businesses a full email server that has full BlackBerry support. The product stems from an acquisition RIM made a year or two ago and offers what RIM says are features similar to Microsoft’s Exchange Server but at a fraction of the price.

The company is also launching “very, very soon” a modest update to its flagship server product, BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3. It will add more support for employee-owned devices (including the BlackBerry Balance feature described earlier), support for encrypted attachments and certification for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the latest version, known as Lync 2010.

11:18 am: RIM is launching yet another server this year, known as the BlackBerry Enterprise Application Middleware (BEAM). BEAM, which companies would have to buy in addition to their BlackBerry email server, aims to streamline enterprise content for use on a BlackBerry. ‘What that results in is a much more efficient application than you would otherwise have,” Devenyi says. It’s in beta now, he adds.

11:25 am: BlackBerry is launching its equivalent of Find My Phone, known as BlackBerry Protect, which will allow individuals to remotely wipe or post a message if a device is lost. Protect will launch later this year, Devenyi says.

Finally, the company is talking about a number of changes it is making to the core BlackBerry Enterprise Server so that it can run via the cloud. Launching later this year, RIM will have the ability for its server product to be remotely hosted and support more than one business. It’s not clear yet if this will be RIM offering BlackBerry as a cloud-based service or if this is a product for hosting partners, though it sounds more like the latter.

11:32 am: Devenyi told Mobilized that the company is just showing the architectural changes it is making, not saying how it will bring the cloud-based capabilities to market. “We’re still working through a number of those details ourselves.” Devenyi said. “It could be both, but we are not announcing.”

11:42 am: On to the PlayBook finally. Senior Product manager Ryan Bidan gives the spiel. He says there is a lot that the company isn’t ready to share. Addressing concerns around battery life, Bidan notes the PlayBook has a 5300-miliamp battery, but doesn’t give specifics on how much battery life that will translate to.

“We’ll have good battery life,” he says. “Don’t worry about the battery life.”

Other details:
Software updates will be pushed down to the device on an ongoing basis. There will be a version of App World on the device for downloading developer-created programs.

And with that, the formal part of the event is over.

I’m shopping for a new Windows PC. Once I choose the processor brand and speed, the amount of memory, the brand and capacity of hard drive, etc., does it matter which PC I buy? Since none of the PC companies make their own components, isn’t price the only differentiating factor (apart from warranties and tech support)?

A:

You’re right that many Windows PCs are made from the same or similar components.

In fact, many are made by the same handful of contract manufacturers in China. But there are differences. Manufacturers mix and match parts from different suppliers, develop or select different designs, load their machines with different added software, and, as you say, offer different qualities of warranties and tech support.

On certain models, they also introduce innovative engineering from time to time. I have certainly noted differences in my testing over the years in things like battery life, keyboards and screens.

Q:

I recently purchased a new Dell Latitude laptop. The problem is irritating programs which recently began appearing on the screen, unrequested and unappreciated. One has a title of “Dell ControlPoint” and the other is titled “Windows Live Messenger.” I don’t want these programs. How do I get rid of them?

A:

These are programs that were bundled with your computer. If you don’t want them, you should be able to go into your Control Panel, to “Programs and Features” (assuming you’re using Windows 7) and uninstall them.

You should find them in the list of programs that appears there, and can then simply select them and choose “uninstall.”

In the case of Messenger, you will likely have to look for it in the list under “Windows Live Essentials.”

Q:

How would you compare the new Blackberry Torch to Samsung’s Galaxy S phones?

A:

They are very different devices. The most important difference is that three of the four Galaxy S models lack a physical keyboard, while the Torch has one. Also, the Torch has only a 3.2 inch screen, while the Samsung models have much larger 4 inch screens. In addition, the Torch, while sporting a refreshed interface, still looks and works like a BlackBerry, while the Galaxy S phones have the more modern-looking Android operating system, and access to Android’s 70,000 apps. The Torch can only use 9,000 apps. Finally, the Torch is (so far) available only on AT&T, while the Galaxy S is a family of devices that will shortly be available on all four major US carriers, albeit under different model names.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

UPDATE: Well, that’s what I get for living in the Apple ecosystem and never having the opportunity to go bargain-hunting for a phone. As one of my esteemed colleagues so graciously points out in the comments, lots of newer phones are steeply discounted on Amazon, some (like the Torch) as soon as the day of release. So the deals offered on the Torch can’t really be read as an indicator of demand, one way or the other. Chastened, I will humbly await additional data before speculating further on its success.

…………………

Launched last Thursday, Research in Motion’s new BlackBerry Torch is already being sold at a discount–and significant one, too. First offered at $199.99 with a two-year contract, you can find the Torch for $99.99 by Amazon and Wirefly, as well (AT&T continues to offer it for the original price).

This seems an ominous sign. The Torch may well be the best BlackBerry yet, as RIM (RIMM) claims, but halving its price so early suggests that Droid- and iPhone-addled consumers may not really care. That said, Torch sales are more likely to be driven by upgrades from existing BlackBerry users than by converts. So RIM is selling to its base here, which isn’t a bad thing given its size (a near-50 percent share of the U.S. market).

Said Gleacher and Co. analyst Mark McKechnie, “We had not expected a consumer phenomenon à la the iPhone 4 or MOT’s Droid X as we view the Torch as largely an upgrade for loyal BlackBerry road warriors. While hard to quantify, early feedback is that most buyers are ‘ugpraders’ — i.e. existing BlackBerry users replacing older units. Thus the sales will add to the overall device sales but not the subscriber additions.”

Earlier this week the kingdom’s Communication and Information Technology Commission ordered a suspension of some BlackBerry services that was to begin today and continue until Research in Motion (RIMM) addressed the national security concerns it raised about lack of access to BlackBerry data. Yet after a temporary outage this morning, BlackBerry service appears to be operating normally, and customer service reps at some Saudi carriers say they haven’t yet been told that a ban would be implemented. “If there are any changes to the service, all the customers will get a text message alerting them of that, but as of now nothing has changed,” a Mobily rep told The Wall Street Journal.

So what’s going on? Obviously some last-minute talks among all the parties involved, evidently talks that may result in RIM locating a server inside Saudi Arabia that would allow authorities there to access encrypted BlackBerry communications. “We are testing technical solutions with RIM…servers to be more exact,” a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Lazaridis said complaints that RIM’s BlackBerry network is not conducive to surveillance reflect a lack of understanding of the Internet. “Everything on the Internet is encrypted,” Lazaridis said. “This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can’t deal with the Internet, they should shut it off.”

That said, it would be bad for business if they did, so Lazaridis says RIM (RIMM) will do what it can to educate the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, India and the like about the dangers of the Internet and the need for encrypted data services like the ones it provides. “This will get resolved…if there is a chance for rational discussion,” Lazaridis said. “We are going to continue to work with them to make sure they understand the reality of the Internet. A lot of these people don’t have Ph.D.’s, and they don’t have a degree in computer science.”

Youch. Can’t imagine that’s going to go over too well with the other folks participating in that “rational discussion”–especially those in India’s information technology industry.