I'm sort of fascinated with the<a title="Apple's iPad" href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/" target="_self"> iPad</a>, which will be released tomorrow by Apple.

[caption id="attachment_304" align="alignleft" width="204" caption="Apple&#39;s iPad"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/overview_safari_20100225.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-304" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/overview_safari_20100225-204x300.png" alt="" width="204" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

I'm not going to buy one right away -- for the same reason I have never bought a car the first year it's out. I figure there will always be bugs to be worked out, and besides, switching to an Apple product will be a big change for me. I have used PC's ever since I bought my first computer in 1989.

That one was a doozy, with a 286 processor and no hard drive. That's right, no hard drive. Everything had to be saved to 5.25-inch floppy disks.

It's interesting. Except for losing a special offer I received in the mail, I probably would have used Apple products all along. When I was working for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1985, I received an offer as a journalist to buy the newest Apple computer -- I think it was the II-C, or something like that.

It would have cost me $2,500, but I wouldn't have had to make any down payment. In those days I was all about the "EZ credit terms."

At any rate, I lost the paper that the offer was written on, and it was four years and two more stops before I bought my first computer.

I'm writing this on a PC, and my five-year-old laptop is a PC as well. I've used Macs at work from time to time, but I've never been as fascinated with them as some people are. I know my wife loves them, but they're better for a lot of the things she has to do and I don't do -- calculations and graphics.

Me, I'm happy with being able to go on the Internet, use Microsoft Word and play a little <a title="Civilization IV" href="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy" target="_self">Civilization IV</a> from time to time.

But the iPad does fascinate me. It weighs 1.5 points, is half an inch thick and the top of the line model sells for $849.

It does a lot of the same things an iPhone does, but there again, I don't have an iPhone. I'm a BlackBerry person, and I truly love my BlackBerry Storm.

Still, I figure sometime this summer I might pick one up.

I haven't had a new toy for a while.