Dear Friends,

It is iPademonium at Small Dog Electronics!

This issue of Kibbles & Bytes is going out right at midnight so that we can officially announce that Small Dog Electronics will be carrying the new Apple iPad at both of our retail locations, starting today, April 3. This will be a retail-only product. Pending the arrival of the FedEx shipment (our fingers are crossed that it will land later today), we will have stock of all three of the Wi-Fi models and will be getting the Wi-Fi/3G models when they ship later this month.

We have been dying to tell the world this news—we’re excited to be a part of one of the most important product launches in Apple history and are truly proud to be involved in this new product’s first days. I am a huge proponent of this new computing platform and I’ll hopefully have my new 64GB iPad in my hands on Saturday. While there have been some very lofty predictions of the impact of the iPad, I am content to realize that this is likely to be yet another platform for Apple to expand our computer tools. We have some of our employee’s thoughts about iPad in this issue.

I would have loved to have had an iPad on my recent vacation to Belize, which by the way, was completely awesome! I did some scuba diving, drank some rum drinks, read a bunch of books and generally recharged and relaxed. I’ll have the iPad for my next trip which is in only a couple weeks as I go to Hong Kong and China for a couple of trade shows and to visit some suppliers to discuss new products for the iPad.

The iPad is truly a revolutionary product that could very well change the face of laptop computing. While I can easily envision the huge impact in education (think online textbooks and no more huge backpacks for our kids), there are a number of other demographics that could easily utilize iPads—electronic databases and digital imaging for medical offices, restaurant menus, quality control on shop floors and many, many other industrial and business markets.

I think the iPad could be the computing platform of choice for many who do not need the full power of a laptop computer, where the need is simple for web surfing, photo management and email. And, watch closely as the Apple App Store begins to fill up with some very powerful games that very well may turn the iPad into the most powerful gaming machine.

For me, I do see it changing my computing habits significantly. For travel and meetings I think that all I will need is the iPad. I’ll probably switch to a MacBook Pro for my full computer and abandon the lightweight MacBook Air. Reading books is something I usually only have time for on airplanes and vacation, but when I do read books, I read very fast. I took five books to Belize and was still ended up reading books on my iPhone on the way home because I had finished them. While I have trained myself to read fast on the iPhone, it is not what I would call an optimal experience. The iPad will change that, for sure.

As I have said, Small Dog Electronics could not be prouder to be an Apple partner and Specialist reseller. I know our customers will get to know the iPad at our stores as all of our employees have been trained to demonstrate the features of the iPad and will be ready for you when you walk into our stores. Several of our employees reserved iPads for their own use and we will be allowing them to get in line with you for our first allocation of the new devices. Watch for some of their reviews!