Having spend the last 7 days with the Apple iPad 32 GB I can now fully give a good review of this thing having put it through it's paces in many different ways.
Build Quality
The Apple iPad is amazingly well built, like that of a MacBook Air. You will find a unibody aluminum case which feels incredibly solid and like that of something of very high quality. Again, it doesn't look really like a giant iPod touch but rather it looks like someone sheared off the top screen of a MacBook pro. Many people have complained that perhaps the black area of bezel on the iPad was too thick and looks stupid. In person when you are actually using the device you will find that you hardly notice the size and it is certainly helpful when trying to grip the iPad from the sides.
There are very few buttons on the iPad. Basically you have a volume rocker, power button/sleep, a screen rotation lock, headphone Jack, and dock connector at the bottom. Of course Apple has opted to make most of your controls again center around the home button.
Speed of Hardware
While many nerds would love to rattle off exactly what makes the iPad tick under the hood, it may be of little importance because after of few seconds of playing with an ipad you will see that it feels blazingly fast. The switching between application and the speed at which browsing the web occurs is top notch. The iPad clearly has some fast processors and is powered by Apple's custom A4 chipsets.
Overall impressions
While we could continue to rattle off why we love this thing, clearly a person needs to play around with it at your local Apple store in order to see if it right for you. Obviously, Apple has created a new product category with the iPad. It is compared to netbooks but is really not a net book itself. The iPad seems to be all about fun. It makes for an exciting way to surf the Internet in a new and exciting manner. It certainly may be missing a few key features but essentially it is mind-blowing.
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