Well, last night I went by the apple store and picked up an iPad. Initial impressions are favorable.

In recent months, I had thought about picking up an iPod Touch, mainly for the apps and mobile experience. Around Christmas, I had also considered a Kindle. Also, my MacBook Pro was starting to have seemingly age related issues, so I had been eyeing a net book of some kind.

When I first got my laptop, I was using it as a desktop replacement. But as time has worn on, it seems to get slower and slower. Recently, I had mainly been using it for web, notes, and email, and using a desktop for my work. As a result, a net book seemed adequate for what I needed.

When the iPad was announced, several people I know seemed underwhelmed. I on the other hand was quite excited. Here was an item that potentially could be used instead of 2 or 3 items on my wish list. Reading about the Kindle for Tablets software, and then Evernote’s plans for iPad made it even more compelling.

That left me with one remaining question and a dilemma. The question: would the onscreen keyboard be useable enough or would I have to get a hardware keyboard. (The iPhone keyboard kind of gets on my nerves, which is why I’ve stuck with my Android phone.). After reading a few reviews this week, I was happy to see that people thought the virtual keyboard was quite usable for more than casual use. Then it came down to a dilemma: get one now, or wait for the 3G model at the end of the month. Since I’ve got wifi access 95% of the places I go, and since I already have a portable 3G access point, I started thinking I would skip the internal 3G. And when I noticed that there is already one, and probably soon 2 4G networks in town, I started thinking the cost benefit wasn’t there. Not to mention I was getting impatient.

So last night I went to the Galleria. They were running low on iPads, and only had the 64G model. That was fine, as I had a lot of data to carry around and had planned on the 32G model anyway.

I didn’t open the box until 11 pm, and by the time I updated my laptop to the latest iTunes, downloaded music, photos, and a few free apps, it was 4 am by the time I went to bed.

But here I am In the afternoon and I haven’t cracked open my laptop yet this morning. Just have a few items to sort out. But otherwise I’ve surfing, listening to music, and now twittering (using AOL Lifestream) and posting to my blog (using the Wordpress client) for the first time in months.