Apple announced that the iPad will be available in nine additional countries starting on May 28. Customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK will be able to preorder beginning May 10th.

Canadian pricing is $50 more.
UK pricing – £429 for 16GB, £499 for 32GB, £599 for 64GB for Wi-Fi models; £529 for 16GB, £599 for 32GB and £699 for 64GB for Wi-Fi + 3G models.
Australian pricing – AUS$629 for 16GB, AUS$759 for 32GB, AUS$879 for 64GB for Wi-Fi models; AUS$799 for 16GB, AUS$928 for 32GB and AUS$1049 for 64GB for Wi-Fi + 3G.

The second round of iPad international distribution (including Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore) is on track for July.

Users can download it here: http://spiritjb.com/

Most have an estimated delivery time of 4:30PM on April 29 — that means people will be receiving their new toys 7 and a half hours before the official April 30th release date!

As iPad 3Gs travel to eager owners, AT&T has posted specifics on data pricing [PDF]. Best of all, you can activate and manage the whole works from the iPad itself. Here’s the lowdown of domestic plans. All prices are US dollars.

* $14.99 per month for 250 MB
* $29.99 per month for unlimited data
* Unlimited access – no added cost – to AT&T’s 20,000+ Wi-Fi Hot Spots

There’s a “usage meter” in the general settings of 3G iPads (Settings > Cellular Data) that lets you monitor your data usage. Additionally, when you purchase the $14.95 plan, you’ll get three warnings that you’re about to exhaust your plan: One at 20 percent, one at 10 percent and finally at zero. If you do exceed your plan, it simply expires until you renew (so you’re not racking up “penalty minutes” or anything like that). Note that AT&T defines a month as a 30-day period.

While we know most of apple’s products are overpriced, we at least expect them to work. However, that is not entirely the case with it’s newest product – the Dock Connector to VGA Adapter. Any type of video with DRM (which includes itunes/netflix themselves) won’t broadcast.

This adapter doesn’t really mirror the iPad’s display, which is fairly weird from our point of view — people are even saying Apple’s own Pages and Keynote apps won’t output via the dongle, making this pointless in allowing people to view presentations on a larger screen.

We now know that landscape orientation is possible with the included dock.

Seems like a decent deal for the price they’re charging ($29)

Update: Kit works with USB Headphones and USB Keyboards

With the announcement of the new iPad created by Apple, and their book reading application, the Amazon Kindle seems to be irrelevant in the e-book reading realm.

First and possibly most importantly, mostly everything the iPad can do, the Kindle can’t.  The iPad is a multifunctional tablet with capabilities that blow the Kindle out of the water.  On the iPad, a user can play games, watch movies, manage and edit documents, listen to music, read books and magazine, as well it supports tons of previous iPhone apps.  But with a Kindle, it reads books, and that’s it.

As well, the iPad supports a beautiful full color, multi touch screen capable screen.

And once again, Apple comes back with a kick-ass market place that will enable users to purchase and download applications and books directly to their iPads, in a way that the Kindle wasn’t able to capture.  And for only $10 more then the Kindle, you can purchase an iPad.

Overall, the iPad is a much smarter purchase in general for a consumer that’s looking for both an e-book reader and an overall great media device.

If you’re currently in the market for an iPad, you might be quite confused.  With over six different versions of the iPad, this could be a difficult decision.  With prices starting at $500 and going up to $830, it’s important that you decide on the tablet that will suit your needs.

Three of the models are powered be Wi-Fi and the others are powered by 3G.  Once you’re able to decide on that, you’ll need to decide on how much storage you’re going to need.  Ranging from 16GB to 64GB, the decision can become quite complicated, especially when you’re already an owner of any of the Apple products.

So, how are you going to decide on the iPad that you’ll be purchasing?  Well, let us help you out a bit.  If you’re considering purchasing an iPad powered by WiFi, you most likely have access to a wireless network.  Knowing this, to connect to the internet you will always need a wireless internet connection.  The upside of this option is avoiding the $15 monthly cost of a 3G powered iPad.

But paying $15 per month for 3G sure does have it’s perks.  Being able to be connected to the internet, able to use all the functions of your iPad from anywhere, will be great for the common commuter.  Also, if you purchase the 3G model, you will also have access to WiFi.

If you’re going to be hanging out at home and using the iPad for pleasure, such as movies, music and games, we’d suggest the WiFi iPad with 64GB of storage space.  For the common commuter, 3G deems necessary.

With Apple’s official launch of the new tablet computer, the iPad, it has all consumers crazy over the buzz.  We decided to dig deeper and find out what makes the iPad so great.

Pricing.  It was a big surprise to see the pricing when the iPad was officially launched.  There were tons of rumors flying around pre-launch as to what the price was going to be for the tablet computer, anywhere from the range of $700 to $1000.  To find out that the iPad starts at just $499 was a great surprise and made tons of consumers excited for this device.  Especially when comparing the device to Amazon’s Kindle, the price is incredible considering the capabilities of the iPad.

No contract on the optional 3G network.  That’s right, no contracts.  Although there is a monthly charge of $15 per month for the optional 3G network that will let iPad users connect to the internet wherever, you are not obligated to keep this service once it’s ordered.  Ipad’s that support 3G also support WiFi, which will allow users to connect to wireless internet connections using their tablet.

The use of a keyboard.  The iPad DOES support the use of external keyboards.  There has been a big uproar through out the Mac community on wether or not they’ll be forced to use the onscreen keyboard, which would make typing documents and using the work portion of the iPad quite difficult.  But, the iPad does support the use of external keyboards.

Applications.  Although, users will either have to download applications or pay for them, the iPad supports millions of applications that are currently available in the App store, making the use of your iPad limitless.