On March 19. Apple began taking online orders for its new IPad computer. The IPad supposed to begin shipping the first week of April. Anyone ordering one right now has to have a lot of faith in Apple. To this moment Apple has given little details about the device and i don’t know anybody that has seen one. It appears somewhat like the IPhone, The IPad is clearly larger but we don’t know what features it will have Apple is still scouting around to line up developers to develop new apps for the device. According to Apple the Source is so open that anything is possible within the imagination of the developer. We know it will play music, display video, books, magazines and newspapers. What office productivity software will it have? Will software all be cloud based or can a user say a lawyer type a document save it locally and e mail it? Most business are still tethered to Microsoft Office

Why spend $500 to $830 on a device that may not be what you expect? Just wait a mere three weeks to see for sure what it actually does and what surprises, good and bad, Apple has packed into the iPad.

Don’t get me wrong: The IPad is going to be a great device in many ways. And I have no doubt that the iPad will appeal to many people even if it’s not perfect. But we’ve all seen promising product demonstrations that resulted in major letdown when we finally got a hold of the real thing. Why take that chance? After all, the first-generation iPad is particularly likely to have disappointments, as it’s the version that will tell us what, after the hoopla dies down, Apple should have done.

Sure, we can expect Apple to make future innovations in the iPhone OS available to the first generation of iPad devices through OS upgrades Apple has nicely done for iPhone and iPod Touch owners. But the iPad’s hardware isn’t upgradable, so you’ll be stuck with the iPad’s relatively low amounts of memory and its lack of connectors such as USB that I would expect Apple to remedy in the future. And you’ll be stuck with whatever iTunes-based content locks Apple decides to place on media content and e-books.

Remember, the same thing happened with the iPod Touch, Apple’s iPhone-based PDA. The first-generation iPod Touch could play only a few sounds and even then only at a whisper, so its calendar alarms and new-email alerts were useless unless you wearing its earphones. You couldn’t change the volume without using the touchscreen — a real issue when driving, jogging, or carrying groceries. There was no microphone, so you couldn’t take voice memos or use services like Skype. (Apple even blocked external microphones from working on it!) Despite Apple making sure each iPhone OS revision has continued to support the first-generation iPod Touch, those hardware limits remain in the actual devices.