I’ve been kicking it around since the early hours of the morning, when I caught the first whiff that today might be the day when Apple raises the curtain just a touch and opens the e-store for iPad pre-orders. Should I rush in with zelotic fervor of a true convert and scoop up a wi-fi model on it’s first day of availability… Or should I play a slightly longer game and wait for the “late April” estimated ship date for the 3G model? You’ll no doubt note that there was never any real consideration of not buying one of them. It’s simply too much of a new, shiny toy to pass up at this point.

Instinctively, I lean slightly towards the slightly more expensive 3G model if for no other reason than it provides an “always on” connection and the no-contract $30/month data fee is actually pretty reasonable by AT&T Mobility standards. Of course the only place I spend any real amount of time that doesn’t have a wi-fi connection is the office, so that tilts the scale back in favor of saving $30 a month and picking up the wi-fi model. With the availability of free and low-cost wi-fi in retail locations becoming almost ubiquitous and the continuing roll-out of personal wi-fi hotspots (MiFi) by cellular providers it’s hard to make the case for 3G this time around.

But really what the final decision came down to was much more basic than any analysis: The wi-fi version is the only one that’s going to be available at initial release on April 3rd. All of that was the big run up to announcing that as of around 10:00 PM, I am now the proud pre-orderer of a 16 GB wi-fi iPad to be picked up at the Apple Store here in Memphis on the morning of April 3rd. If it turns out I can’t live without the 3G connection I’ll either pick up a MiFi subscription from Sprint or Verizon and run my own hotspot or put the wi-fi model up for sale and bring the 3G version into the inventory as a replacement unit.

In case anyone is wondering about my logic for ordering the smallest memory option, I have to admit that I’ve never come close to using the available memory on any of my iPhones (including my first 8 GB model). If I were into movies on the go, I would probably have gone with the 32 GB, but my real plan at the moment is to use this thing as an e-reader, browser, and note taker around the office. 16 GB should be more than sufficient to fill the bill for that. Besides, no doubt version 2 will be released in 6-12 months and I’ll just have to end up upgrading then anyway.