A week ago from today I ordered my iPad 2. I decided on getting the black 16GB WiFi model. Black was an easy call because as most have stated, it disappears a lot better than white when using the device. WiFi was easy too because almost everywhere I go I have some sort of WiFi connection. The storage was a bit harder. I wasn't sure whether or not to bump it up to 32GB of storage for the extra $100 so I can put extra iTunes content on it, but I decided that most of my iTunes content would go on my iPhone 4 and not my iPad. 16GB ended up being the winner.

I thought it would be in my best interest to actually get a hands on with the thing before it comes in at the end of the month (thanks to the current 3-4 week shipping delay on all models). So I moseyed on in to my local Best Buy and they were on display but of course sold out. I grabbed the black one and started playing with it. The first thing I noticed was the design. It's very thin like every single review has pointed out countless times. The build quality is excellent. It's a little bit heavier than I would like. I was a bit underwhelmed by the display but you can blame that on my iPhone 4's retina display. Now every single time I look at a display and see any signs of pixels I feel like it's outdated. It's just something I'm going to have to get over.

I launched Safari instantly because I really want my iPad to replace my laptop (which is beginning to show its age) as much as possible and 90% of the time I spend on my laptop is in Google Chrome. I was pleased with how quickly sites loaded up. I opened a few other tabs and switched between them. I've yet to use a Xoom, but I do think I would prefer the tabbed browsing on Honeycomb over Apple's version. I call it a gallery of windows. I also was disappointed that I did get that checkerboard effect while scrolling. This thing is running a 1GHz dual-core A5 chip and it can't even scroll? Then I remembered that there were probably a ton of apps still open on it because so many people walk into Best Buy and play with the iPad. Sure enough, pretty much every app installed was running. I closed every single one except Safari and that helped the scrolling significantly. I still did get the checkerboard a bit when zoomed in on the page, but zoomed out entirely it was fine. Still, it seems that 1GB of RAM would have been more beneficial than the current 512MB.

Next I opened up Photo Booth. Nine different camera views came up, each with a different effect. This made me feel much better about that A5. I closed the app. It's nice, but it's really only one of those "look what my iPad can do!" apps. Speaking of the camera, I honestly don't think they are as bad as everybody made them out to be. Yes they have crappy low light quality and yes taking a photo will only result in a 0.92 MP resolution, but is anyone honestly going to use the camera on this thing? I'm not. Who is going to hold up a big chunk of aluminum in public to take a picture? These cameras are meant for video calling and nothing else. For that, it's more than adequate.

Finally, I opened up Pages to get a sense for what productivity is like on the iPad 2. It's very nice and very elegant. I began typing and surprisingly didn't make very many mistakes, although there's something about typing on a touchscreen and not getting any tactile feedback that just doesn't feel quite right. Oh and forget typing anything longer than a few sentences in portrait mode because it's just plain awkward. I think I'm just going to have to adjust to the touchscreen keyboard and it should be fine after a few weeks.

In my brief time with the iPad, I also played around a bit with iMovie and Garage Band. I was very impressed with the power of iMovie. Garage Band is nice too, but I won't be purchasing it because it's not something I need.

Overall, I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the tablet. I walked into Best Buy hoping that it would be much more capable, but I ended up feeling like it was more of a toy and less of a real computer. Of course, I didn't have much time to spend with it and I'm by no means cancelling my order. Hopefully sometime in May I'll be able to post my full review with lots of smiles and giggles and positive adjectives on how great this device is. Until then, I remain a slight skeptic.