The iPad launched in the US yesterday and analysts are suggesting that 700,000 were sold in-store in one day. Add this to the estimated 500,000 preorders and that’s a successful launch in anyone’s language.

The iPad won’t be available in Ireland until late April or early May. However, I was in coral springs in Florida and popped over to the Boca Raton Apple Store last night to pick one up. When I arrived there was about 40 people queuing. Sad to say there was a real buzz of excitement amongst the gathered nerds and the store staff. You got the impression that most of the customers would have agreed to sell their own mothers to get their hands on an iPad.

I’m glad to report that I managed to get a 64GB iPad. The price seemed reasonable because the 16GB model is likely to cost around the same in Ireland.

The product itself lives up to the hype. For techie people and Apple fans, it really is a thing of beauty. Internet access is incredibly fast; interfaces for Gmail and lots of other sites are sleek; the iBooks eReader and book store are excellent (if a bit pricey, but there a thousands of books available for free too); video playback is sharp and fast; and the overall experience is remarkably personal.

The one major drawback of the iPad right now is that it does not support Flash. Steve Jobs and co. Have instead opted for HTML 5 support. While there is more going on here than Apple is letting on – an attempt to oust Adobe and corner yet another market? – chances are that more widespread HTML 5 support on websites will come along in time. However, for consumers this means that right now a lot of the most popular video sites – veoh, megavideo etc – simply will not work on the iPad. Even standard work-arounds for this issue on the iPhone and iPod Touch will not work – for the moment at least – on the iPad.

Despite this, the iPad is a major winner and will be copied and copied again. It’s also a game-changer and I feel confident in saying that the home and education computer market (and likely many others) will never be the same again. I