First reviews of the iPad surface

While the rest of us wait with baited breath for Saturday to come (or sit nonchalantly with a notebook wondering what the fuss is about), a couple of celebrity and veteran tech journalists have already been playing with the iPad.

‘Tech-celeb’ Stephen Fry has posted a very restrained video showing the device being unpacked for his review for Time magazine, but it’s The Wall Street Journal that has usurped all by posting the first review of the device.

Malt Mossberg, WSJ’s personal tech columnist, has called the iPad a ‘game changer’ with the ‘potential to change portable computing profoundly’ after his extensive hands on with the device.

He praised the battery life, claiming that it lasted even longer than the ten hours stated by Apple, along with the speed, email, e-book reading, movie playback, and internet capabilities of the device.

It wasn't all praise, though. "If you need to create or edit giant spreadsheets or long documents…the iPad isn’t going to cut it". I guess those aspects weren’t considered ‘magical’ enough for Apple to improve.

While it’s always best to take pre-release, ‘specially selected’ reviews with a pinch of salt, the enthusiasm shown in the article does appear to be genuine.

We’ll have to wait and see on Saturday whether or not the golden tablet PC lives up to the immense pre-release hype.