I hope that "training" doesn't mean a quick read of a tiny pamphlet...

Hope that girl on the broadway/lafayette best buy that talked to me get weLl trained. SMHS

Good to see. I hope they are doing similar training in other retail outlets...soon.

I hope RIM sends out reps to train people and monitor store displays. It's time to educate.

Training is GOOD, if the reps listen. I say give RIM employees districts and actually go to different BestBuy stores and promote properly.

Its up to the store manager to train their employee on this & from some of the threads posted they are not doing a good job. So most likely this will fall short at bestbuy.

yeah Baby!

no training required here so release OS2 already (;

Not usually so critical on here but hey. I think its more of a reminder then training! After all just once try and ask a sales guy in the department some real questions regarding ANY tablet or phone. Unless they own the device, its quite simple you get the usual "oh yes its very good" "you can send email" "you can twitter and facebook" but it is a rarity that you can find a knowledgeable sales person at Best Buy!

The most important thing is the guest of honor is coming (OS 2) and I am pumped!

RIM is living up to their new slogan "Be Bold".

"Everything your customers expect from BlackBerry" ..... well almost. Minus BBM.

My heart skipped a beat just for a quick sec because the first thing I read was "Introducing BlackBerry PlayBook OS2".

LOL I guess I am looking forward to this launch too much.

Best Buy training employees about a blackberry product? Hard to imagine.

So did they receive any training when the device was released back in April? If they did then this will likely be as worthless. I found that your average BestBuy employee doesn't know where anything is in the store that isn't in their area. I'm glad this is being done, but given how poor BestBuy was originally with the Playbook I'm not expecting much from them.

They should give the sales team some incentives to sell the PB(like a free PB for X amount sold). It's the only way they will actually push the product over the product they currently use or favor.

Best Buy at the forefront of a BlackBerry PlayBook mega-promotion. Who'd have ever thunk it? Who's next? BGR?

hope the rep actually listens.

i rmb back a couple of months ago, I brought my friend to a staples to buy a playbook, and the sales rep there actually tried to discourage my friend from getting one.

He said stuff like.. ipad is good...and so is the hp touchpad. (shows how much he knows)

RIM is crazy to assume iPad and Android biased sales reps will push their tablet. They really need to setup shop in busy Best Buy stores much like Apple did. At the very least, pay to get a better display of their products. Out of all retailers I have visited, not a single one has had a working display. Heck, last time I went to Best Buy it did not even have a PB on display anymore. As for the release date, I am bummed about the 17th not being the release date. But thinking logically, why would you release a major update on a Friday. The 21st does sound more realistic. Let's hope they at least live up to the February deadline.

Hopefully a BestBuy insider will take screen shots and post them on the forums so we can actually see what "training" is being done.

Waste of time. My 5 years old is more knowledgeable about the PB than those Best Buy sales guy. Every time I walk in Best Buy nobody is there and the demo PB is always off.

Best buy needs actual PB users as sales guys.

C'mon OS 2!!! Can't wait!!!

Quite frankly, I feel a bit silly for doing this...but every so often I check for Software updates...always hoping to be informed that OS 2.0 is available for download!

Is it just me? LOL

My absolute biggest frustration with my Playbook isn't that I can't get my inbox on it. It isn't that I can't see my calendar. The bridge worked for me with mail but since that experience will be enhanced is nice thing for me but it doesn't allay my frustrations and as such I don't seem to be as hyped as some are.

My biggest frustrations come when I see something I want to do and next to it I see "works on Android" or "works on iOS" but I never see "works on Playbook".

On the above it says "your customers favorite apps and thousands more" now that gets me cranked!! The RIM guys need to come up with a cool logo that developers can put next to Apps that tells me with just a simple glance - that when I see something cool that I want to do - of course it works on my Playbook!

I'm about to go all vigilante up in best buy and show people myself the power of the playbook!!! Lol ok maybe not but someone needs to. "RIM" nice to hear a update to Facebook is coming!

Noticed this on my Twitter search for "playbook" ... now seeing this post it makes sense. Wasn't sure if it was a RIM insider or what.

"@drewedward: In #playbook OS 2 training...very impressed"

Launch date of 21st has been confirmed by RIM, see berryreview.com

Yeah now we all know!

The word "training" should always have sarcastic quotation marks around it when it references the employees at Best Buy.

The 21st,,, man this is going to be a very long, long weekend waiting for that to come... Was hoping the 17th so I could get lots of play time over the Canadian long weekend before going back to work on Tuesday...

N4BB and berry review just announced that rim has confirmed the release for the 21St!!!

One thing I noticed about the Playbook on display at Bestbuy, back in April of last year was that it was hard to find. They had it in the Cell phone section. No big display or anything like that. It would be super beneficial to have a nice big display, like the iPad one that has several iPads to play with. One thing that I can recommend is set the thing to not go to sleep. People that don't have a playbook can't figure out for the life of it how to turn it on. The power button was not too helpful in this effort either. A nice LCD Flatscreen TV perched above with the HDMI out attached to it would be cool to see in a store. This would attract some attention as well. Imagine kids playing Angry Birds on it on the TV in the middle of Best Buy. I’m not an Angry birds fan, but it has an easily recognizable screen. Imagine browsing through the new features. Some shortcuts on the playbook itself to launch how to's or show the cool features of Bridge. Sorry I'm starting to ramble again...

The bottom line of the poster tells employees to go to the eLearning Lounge, so it's a computerized run through. Nothing wrong with that but I've taken lots of training like this and it's very easy to blow through it without absorbing anything. It will take a strong manager to ensure employees "get it done" first before there's any hope of them helping their customers.

RIM should release over the weekend so we all have time to download and install and troubleshoot, especially being a long weekend here in the US...here I go believing the US is the center of the world, I guess I caught the bug...

I wish i had a part-time at bestbuy...lol. I WOULD SELL IT!

I'll pass on Best Buy. The Idiot sales staff there does everything to talk you out of anything Blackberry. They are clueless when it comes to Blackberry features.

Every time i go to bestbuy, and i mean any best buy non of the Blackberry Playbook works, i also asked the sales man, if he can plug it so i could use it, his answer is you should try android. How can BB PlayBook sells if some Retailers are doing nothing to help.

Was told my "free order" for my developer playbook would likely ship within 72 hours... last saturday. So I wonder if they're waiting and shipping out OS2 loaded playbooks, instead of just shipping out old OS1 stock? Can't wait to get that tracking number so I can start stalking the delivery guy...

With all the negativity we have posted about BB trying to persuade customers not to buy a PB, I'm surprised they are doing training. I hope they train their employees not to be biased to any one particular brand and not make the customer frustrated. I went to BB in Buffalo back in October and I have had my PB since April, and I asked the guy to give me info on the PB. Well sir I'm sure you don't know why you would want a Playbook when we have this great iPad 2 and Android Xoom. Well you don't know what I like, and I know I like Blackberry. And I want a playbook. Sorry sir, but the android and ipad do a lot more things. Like flash? Well the android does.

At this point, I told him, I already have a playbook and I don't apprciate trying to be persuaded to another platform when I want the PB.

IDIOTS!

I find this very interesting because I got into a pretty heated argument with a Cincinnati Best Buy rep over this very topic at Christmas time. I had a friend who only had a few hundred dollars to spend on a present for his wife and really wanted to get her a tablet. She desperately needed word processing capabilities so that leaves out Kindle Fire and pricing leaves out the iPad. I asked them where their Playbooks were and he stated Best Buy discontinued the device because it was dead and the OS was a waste of time. I asked him to show me another device with the resolution, solid build and capabilities of the PlayBook and he called me a fanboy. My friend and I marched straight to Radio Shack, where we happily spent his money on a Playbook that his wife LOVES.! BTW, that's now two iPhone owning friends of mine who love their Playbooks!!! :-)

I hope they teach them how to turn them on there's 2 best buys in my area the playbook is never on and when i ask they act like I want to date their girl friend! they are always the most expensive.

Great. I'm sure this will change them from actively torpedoing attempted PlayBook purchases to simply giving a "Meh..." when asked about them.

I keep seeing no mention of Android apps anywhere. Is this even a reality? I keep reading posts from developers saying the DEV version of OS2 crashes all the time in the Android testing enviroment. Whats the deal?

I find this funny because best buy employees think its discontinued.

Best Buy trains people ? lol

one of my best friends works at best buy and he has 3 brain cells left. much more training needed!

Netflix? BBM? Can you read your text messages from your phone on os2.0?? I hope this update isn't just email, contacts and calendar because those should've been on their originally.