i think apple is very much prepared for this launch... they sold over 3M new iPads over the weekend since the launch, something that took 80 days to do for the ipad2... so i think there is enough inventory this time, and no more lines.

Battery life on the new one is about the same as the ipad1 it is replacing.  Screen quality is significantly better and more responsive than the ipad1...but if you have an ipad2...its not really worth upgrading IMO.

As for the 4G is a total farse...there are barely and cities in the US that actually have the LTE network setup  at best most US networks are running at 3.5G.  So you could buy a ipad2 3g and still get just as good internet speeds at the ipad3 for a fraction of the price.  

Third thing people are correct the US ipad3 4G will not work at 4G speeds outside of the US.  Reason is....like always the US prefer to use technology different from the rest of world.  For example the bands used by the ipad3 are 700 & 2100 MHz while the 4G LTE offered by One2free is on 1800/2600, same with O2 in Europe planning to use the 2600 band for their LTE network (see: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/ ... years-4g-spectrum/)  This actually maybe the reason why the 4G ipad3 in being delayed for release in HK.

"like always the US prefer to use technology different from the rest of world"

It's not a question of like.  Different parts of the world jump into technology at different points.

For mobiles, China doesn't use the widely adopted version of LTE.

For consumer electronics, the US and Europe had VHS / Beta recording tapes.  Asia completely skipped it and went to VCD, which converselynever caught on in the West

since I don't have an iPad 2 but had the original iPad, here's what I like:

- cpu speed is much faster
- screen is significantly faster
- camera and facetime is nice
- battery seems to last a lot longer, but hard to say since it's brand new

I wished there were more apps that take advantage of the new screen.  In fact I haven't seen anything yet that is The iPad-specific.