Can't Believe It!

My God... I've just met a strange phenomenon.

Frankly said, I'm really impressed by the iPad2 and I'm willing to purchase one. I have even drawn up the financial plan for it. Besides, I'm trying to improve my mobility and productivity on the go, so I won't have to carry my heavy Dell laptop all the way around where I'm going, although I still prefer laptops to tablet computers.


So far, no Apple products have fascinated me to be honest. Here are the example:

1. iPod Classic, I don't really like its bulky design. 
2. The iPod Shuffle, although cheap, it's way too small for me... and 2GB of storage will never be enough to contain my songs (I have at around 3GB of music collection, and I'm sure you guys have more than it ;) ).
3. iPhone4? Alright, its design is indeed revolutionary, I admit... but it's way too expensive here in Indonesia, and they still don't have the contract system like the one in the U.S. (Alright, one network managed to be the pioneer of this, but as expected... the rate is way too expensive, for me at the very least).
4. iPod Touch... Hm, alright... It's a great gaming device, but I've already had my Galaxy S (Codenamed Kronos) so I guess I won't need it. The same reason applies for the MacBook.
5. The old iPad: I feel like it's so heavy when I borrowed my friend's.

So, how come could I like iPad2? Well, it's not the cameras, but its thinner and lighter design than its predecessor. I heard it also has 9x better graphics than the current iPod Touch or its predecessor, and a dual-core A5 chip. I've tried the 1GHz single-core mobile processor, and I'd really more than glad to try the dual-core version.

But the problem is, the device is yet to come in here. Sure, there are some sites offering the pre-order, but the price has been skyrocketed. For example, one retail store set the 16GB, Wifi-only variant for Rp8,999,000! Isn't that crazy? If you converted that to USD, it would be more than U$1,000! (U$1 = Less than Rp9,000 now), apart from the original retail price of A$579 (around Rp5,2 million), or S$538 (around Rp3,7 million)).

Alright, I understand that the shipping will be expensive, but 30% is just too much. I compared it with Australia and Singapore, since they should have lower shipping fee than the U.S. The device itself is listed as "Currently Unavailable" in Singapore Apple Store site, but it's available for shipping in Australia. I think I'm going to get one from either one of those countries...