That’s if you have a US shipping address.  I have several options here and so do you.  You can’t have yours shipped to my mom or to a friend of mine who lives in the US and works for a global shipping company.  But you could use a service like OneNow – I’m sure there are other companies offering a similar service. OneNow’s pretty pricey, even with their supposed discount rates on global shipping, of course they tack on a handling fee, as they have every right to do.

Anyway, pre-orders went live on the Apple web site today.  For the WiFi-only models, you can pre-order now and get home delivery promised on April 3rd or in-store pick-up the same day.  WiFi+3G models will go out in “late April.”

Accessories available to order at the same time include a docking station with a keyboard ($69), a dock with no keyboard ($29), a spare AC adapter, a cover, crappy Apple earphones and a VGA-display adapter.

Andy Ihnatko has gone for the whole nine yards.  Of course, as he says, he’s writing a book on this and will earn back the $829 many times over. In terms of storage, my reasoning is much the same as his.  If I can get 64 gig, why would I settle for 32?  If there was a 512 gig model, I’d probably pop for that one and have no trouble filling it up either.

My first thought was that I should get the WiFi only unit.  $130 cheaper.  I have the PCCW MiFi device to use with it and I don’t want to enter into yet another contract to provide data service for this device.

But, to put it another way, the WiFi+3G version only costs $130 more than the WiFi-only.  Presumably I could yank the SIM card out of my MiFi and shove it in this.  Would I want to do this?  Would I need to do this?  Right now, I can’t say for certain.

The WiFi+3G model has at least one feature that the WiFi-only model doesn’t – built-in GPS.  Will that be useful?  That’s also hard to say.  I know what’s in the app store today but who can say what will be there six months from now?  One thing’s for certain, there will probably be at least 10,000 new apps written specifically for the iPad but who knows what they will be?  (Okay, a thousand of them will be fart sound apps, but still.)

In the long run, I’m tempted to get the WiFi-only and use it in conjunction with my PCCW MiFi.  But I still haven’t pulled the trigger.  Thinking, thinking, thinking …..

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