It’s official! For those of you outside the US who have been waiting for your iPads, Apple has announced launch dates. If you live in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland or the UK you can pre-order as of May 10th and the iPad will launch on May 28th.

Apple plans to release the iPad in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore in July. Apple will announce availability, local pricing and pre-order plans for these nine additional countries at a later date.

For anyone outside of those countries my advice to you is to is to make a new friend that lives in one of those countries quick!

“I pre-ordered a 32GB 3G after looking up e-textbooks.
Next semester I have a history course that has five books, weighing a total of about 15 pounds and costing about $500. The e-versions could fit on the 0.5 pound iPad and cost a total of $225. That pretty much sold me on it!” – Derek

“I have one on reserve for next Saturday. My main use for it will be for web, mail and note taking and such in meetings at the office. I’ll use it at home for casual web surfing and emails. Don’t need the 3G model, I have the iPhone for that. eBooks is where I will be spending money…” – Scott
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Did you pre-order your iPad? If you haven’t pre-ordered yet it’s looking like you won’t have a shiny new toy on April 3rd.

Visits to the Apple website today showed that any pre-orders placed now won’t be shipped until April 12th (for the Wi-Fi only, the Wi-Fi+3G is still showing a late April ship date). If you already pre-ordered you’ll still get your iPad on April 3rd. (continue reading…)

Why is McDonald’s still counting? How insecure is this company? 40 million, 80 gillion…Look, we get it! You’ve sold a lot of hamburgers, whatever the number is. Just put up a sign: McDonald’s – We’re doing very well.” Jerry Seinfeld

Clearly, I am not the only one amped about the new Apple iPad.  There were 190,000 pre-orders in just the very first week. Now that may not seem like a staggering number, but let’s keep in mind a couple of things. 1.) This is a device that a slim few have seen in person let alone held in their hands. So these are purchases sight unseen. 2.) This total does not even include reservations for in store pickup (a favorite method of purchase for many Apple buyers) or bulk orders placed by institutions 3.) The Amazon Kindle has sold roughly 2.5 million units in 3 years. Apple sold 7.6% of that total in one week.

Keep reading…