After coming to regret not purchasing an iPad over the last year, I felt like it might be time to buy some sort of tablet in 2011. While I would have liked to have had a choice between the new iPad and the HP TouchPad, I didn't really feel like waiting until summer. But, I also didn't feel like waiting in line, or waiting for a long ship time from the online Apple store. Thankfully, due to a fortuitous series of events, I managed to snag an iPad 2 this evening, from the main Apple Store in San Francisco:

So far, my initial impressions are that it takes quite a while to sync (I copied about 11GB of data over &mdash Thunderbolt can't come soon enough), the iPad is ridiculously hard to photograph (at least, if you don't want the reflection of the photographer in the photo), and I've already dropped it once (seems to be fine though — no scratches). I'm going to play with my new toy as much as I can over the weekend, and hopefully I'll write up some of my experiences soon.

More unboxing photos on Flickr, and a few shots from inside the SF Apple Store as well.

-Andy.