I had originally planned to give the business to a local Mac shop. I waited in the cold and wet (unnecessarily, as it turns out) for 45 minutes for them to open. Once we got inside they told us they didn't have any 32GB models, which disappointed me.

Some context before I go on: I live on Vancouver Island, not to be confused with the nearby City of Vancouver. The island and its largest city Victoria is the provincial capital, but it's a pretty small town by my standards (300,000 pop.). Despite this, we have LOADS of places that sell Macs and iOS stuff, so the "crowd" that wanted to get iPads today is well spread out around town.

Anyway, I had an insight that maybe the big US-owned "office supply" chains would get more shipment than the little Mac stores, so I drove to the nearby Staples where I walked in, asked, got and paid. For once, they lived up to their slogan "That was easy."

I'll give the local Mac-only dealers future business on a new case and other accessories that are frankly more profitable for them anyway. Staples probably netted $25 off today's near-$700 purchase.

I'm in the process of "restoring" the new iPad from my iPad 1 backup (got $250 for that, so really this new iPad only cost me $444 Canadian) so I can't comment on the machine itself much, but the unboxing was it's usual experience.

I really enjoyed my original iPad and am looking forward to using the new one later today. My original Apple cover for the iPad 1 fits this one (sorta), so I'm using that for protection temporarily until I decide on a proper case. I'm kind of thinking of the YourType Folio from Belkin ($100) since it has a (I'm told) good-quality tactile removable BT keyboard included, but I haven't decided yet.