Apple iPad Gets Low-Key Reception at Connecticut Best Buy

By Clint Boulton

This was the scene outside the Best Buy at 9:30 a.m. EDT, 30 minutes before the store opened and the iPad went on sale. Quite the contrast from these scenesin New York City and San Francisco.

A Best Buy employee began handing these pre-sale vouchers out to consumers around 9 a.m. EDT. Consumers who had them were virtually guaranteed to walk home with a device, provided they redeemed it before 5 p.m. EDT April 3.

This is the scene outside Best Buy at 9:55 a.m., 5 minutes before the iPad went on sale. No joke.

Best Buy here had four display units for users to play with. Taking our turn, eWEEK stepped right up and was greeted with this home screen.

Just like the iPhone and most smartphones, the screen automatically adjusts from vertical view to horizontal view and back as you turn it.

Make any image your wallpaper.

Google Maps and YouTube are preinstalled on the device, with Google as the default search engine. Here eWEEK easily swiped around views of the Eiffel Tower in France.

You can’t take pictures with the iPad. Nonetheless, photo albums are a joy to set up and access on the iPad’s sleek screen, which was extremely responsive to users’ touch. It really is like a large iPhone or iPod Touch, minus the calling capabilities, of course.

Scott Haggerty, who purchased a 32GB iPad April 3, talks about the device with a Best Buy employee, who asked to remain anonymous because the retailer doesn’t allow its employees to chat with reporters without first vetting it with corporate headquarters. You can see the four iPads here, one of the more modest displays for such a hyped device.

Haggerty’s son, Luke, plays a game on the iPad, which is tethered to the desk.

The Haggertys pose in the Mac section, of course.

Soon, all four iPads on display were being rocked by interested consumers. None of them had yet purchased the device, but wanted to play with it. Best Buy declined to say whether it had sold out of its iPad inventory by 10:30 a.m. It is believed not, as the store reportedly had about 50 units and interest was tepid so early into the sale.