Appadvice, a resource for all things iPhone App related, is reporting that “according to a reliable source of ours familiar with the matter,” Apple will be accepting iPad preorders on February 25th. That’s this coming Thursday.

Mashable maintains that it is safest to consider this news as rumor rather than fact, but has arguments for the veracity of Appadvice’s claim.

Some wag called “randgris@hotmail.com” has done a side-by-side technical comparison of the iPad, released in January of 2010, and the stone tablet, released in approximately 40,000 BC. It’s a draw!

After all the hype leading up to its revelation, the iPad has gotten mixed early reviews, tilting a little towards negative.

The iPad has its cons, to be sure: the inability to multitask and the lack of a camera being the worst two strikes against it. But it’s worth remembering the harsh initial reaction against a certain other flawed Apple device: that would be the iPod, in 2001.

Looking back at the knowledgeable techie news forums of the day, you may experience deja vu: a lot of the anti-Apple talking points and storylines are surprisingly similar.

A MacRumors commenter, October, 2001:

“Sounds very revolutionary to me. hey – heres an idea Apple – rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why dont you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive and crap server line up? or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?”

Read on...

That was fast: earlier this hour, Geekosystem passed along the report from The Next Web and Inquisitr that you could preorder an iPad on Amazon.de, Amazon’s German portal. We went there ourselves, saw that it was indeed still available for sale, and took a screenshot.

But if you revisit those very same URLs from our post and the other two — which were still functioning at around 10:20am EST and directing you to the preorder pages — you’ll find that they now return the text “Ihre Suche nach ergab leider keine Produkttreffer.” In other words: “your search did not match any products.”

Similarly, if you go to an individual page, the buying options that used to be there have been replaced with this message: “Melden Sie sich an, um per E-Mail benachrichtigt zu werden, wenn dieser Artikel verfügbar ist. Diesen Artikel von anderem Anbieter kaufen.” That is: “Sign up to be notified by e-mail when this item is available. Request this item from another seller.”

But that didn’t stop the 64GB iPad with WiFi and UMTS (3G, ish) and the 16GB iPad with WiFi from shooting to the #2 and #3 spots on Amazon.de’s bestseller list for “Elektronik and Foto”:

Well, this is odd: the closest you can get to iPad preorder salvation on Apple.com is to sign up for a notification when the iPad is available to be ordered.

Likewise, on the stateside Amazon.com, all you can do is “Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.”

But on Amazon’s German domain, amazon.de, it’s already possible to preorder the iPad. Update: not anymore. That was fast.

Yesterday, we found out what the latest mysterious and life-changing product from Apple — the heralded multi-purpose new “Tablet” e-reader — would be called. It’s called the iPad.

Is it just us, or does that remind you of stocking up on Kotex?

Trick question: It’s not just us. It’s the ENTIRE INTERNET.

So: if you have just awoken from a coma and/or discovered the Internet, Apple rolled out their tablet today. It’s called the iPad. After the wave of iTampon/Max-iPad/other feminine hygiene product-related jokes died down, folks came to this realization: there are some good things about the iPad, and some bad things about it.

It’s fair to say that the reaction to the iPad has been mixed. This can be explained away, in part, by the absurd buildup to the thing. But what substantive features define it? The good and the bad:

Chalk it up to the ‘jealous blogger’ syndrome; while our counterparts at Gizmodo, Engadget, Slashgear, Ars Technica, and gdgt get to cover the unveiling of the iPad live and repeatedly tease us with tantalizing dispatches from the land of One Infinite Loop, the rest of the blogosphere has to wait with its nose pressed against the glass for the tiniest glimpse of today’s unveiling. And it’s not just bloggers: given the way the iPad revelation seemingly ground Twitter to a standstill, there were plenty of interested civilians as well. Why does Apple do to this to us? Is it part of Guy Kawasaki‘s original secret manual for emotionally abusing fanboys until they harden into dead-eyed full-fledged Product Evangelists?

Theories:

Well, this is interesting: over on gdgt, where they’re hosting a liveblog of the Apple Tablet iPad unveiling, there are Nexus One ads on every page. But when you go into a non-Apple gdgt post — say, this discussion of the HMX-H100 camcorder — it’s regular, remnant-looking ads all the way. Smart targeting? Competitor-baiting? A little bit of both?

The iPad: Well, it’s definitely a better name than the iSlate. What do you think of the name? Poll after the jump: