And once again, Apple consumes the tech world with another game-changing product.

I pre-ordered mine for store pickup on Saturday, April 3rd. Will I actually go through with it and make the purchase? A lot of that depends on how much money I can raise between now and then [that's less than 3 weeks away] to afford the 16gb WiFi model. I’d like the 32gb model, and I know it’s a good deal to double the storage space for only 20% more, but based on my last round of items I sold on eBay, raising that extra hundred will be a small challenge.

My main intended use for the iPad will be two fold:

• Media Viewing

- Watching TV shows mostly, with movie through in here and there. And video podcasts, with the idea to actually throw my own hat into the video podcast ring.

• Word Processing

- Word processing? Are you serious, Marty? You haven’t even tried it out yet. But wait. The bluetooth external Apple keyboard will work with it and it’s going to be small and light enough to carry both the iPad and keyboard, using a version of the iWork application Pages written specifically for the iPad. My more than a year old HP 2133 netbook has become too slow even for simple word processing. I have found that I use my MacBook Pro more often than the netbook as a couch computer. So the netbook and anything else I can sell will help go towards my new couch computer, which should be plenty fast for both Googling and working on my next story.

So come April 3rd, we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, check out Andy Ihnatko’s well-written overview of his first impressions of the iPad: