First, I can report that the screen is beautiful, colors vivid, and this thing is fast. Web pages appear quickly, my videos from YouTube run quickly. The onboard keyboard is very senstive, no resting fingers here, even ever so briefly. But the keyboard gets more usable as you get used to it. The same thing happened when I first used the iPhone virtual keyboard. At first, I thought it was terrible. Now, I love it. I’m sure the same will happen with the iPad. Visually, and in terms of user interface, I’m very impressed.

The size is nice, not to big, not too small. But it is heavier than it first seems. Meda quickly realized that she would not be comfortable holding it unsupported for long. So I guess there will be a period of finding an appropriate and comfortable iPad posture, which might vary for different uses and settings. Sitting around the living room with it sort of propped on your lap is simple. Other settings may differ.

Oh, you really do need a case. I wondered where to put it on night #1. It ended up back in the box. Not a useful spot. Hopefully the case will arrive today.

Now the details.

When the UPS truck came up our little dead-end street and parked at the top of our driveway at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon, I was at the stove working on a pot of shoyu chicken for a pot-luck dinner with friends. Of course, after a moment of disbelief, I dropped the spoon and went running into the yard to welcome the driver and the package. All this after a couple of emails from Apple stating in no uncertain terms that the delivery to our “remote” location would be on Monday (today). For once, I’m glad Apple got it wrong.

Okay. So I brought the box in, opened it, removed what looks and acts like an iPod Touch on steroids, hit the “On” button, and got a little picture of a usb cable and an iTunes icon.

Huh? Oh, getting started involves plugging in to iTunes.

No problem. Carried the iPad to my laptop, booted iTunes, plugged in the pad, and…error message telling me that I need to download the latest version of iTunes.

Okay. Not hard, but not fast. I guess I was in line with thousands of other early buyers now hitting on Apple, so it took quite a while to download the 90+ megabytes. But, when it finally was done, the process of getting the iPad up and running was quick and straightforward.

Well, maybe not totally straightforward.

The first sync ended up copying all of those iPhone apps to the iPad. I guess it did reject those which would not run at all on the iPad. I hoped for an easy path for identifying those apps which have already been rewritten to use all of the larger iPad screen rather than running in a small phone-size window in the middle of the screen. So far, I haven’t found it.

I did quickly download Pages, Apple’s own word processor now rewritten for the iPad; Things for iPad and Evernote (both notes applications that have desktop and iPhone versions, with easy sync between the three platforms). I also updated NPR, BBC, and AP news for the larger iPad screen, as well as a new version of the WordPress app.

I’m still awaiting arrival of the case and keyboard that I ordered, which are due today.

I think once they are all in hand, I’ll have a better idea of how usable the iPad is going to be as a laptop replacement for those days when i don’t need all the heavy-duty software loaded in the 5-1/2 pound MacBook Pro. I remember being quite happy with my old Palm phone and folding external keyboard that made it possible to do substantial writing with a tiny fraction of the weight of a computer. I’m hoping the iPad will become a similar replacement, but the jury is still out.

No, I haven’t loaded any games or movies, so can’t report on that whole sphere of use.

I’ll probably update this at the end of Week 1.