If you’re in any other country apart from the U.S. then you’re going to have to wait till “late April” to get your grubby little hands on an iPad. While our friends over the ditch in the U. S. of A. are currently able to per-order their WiFi iPad, available as of the 3rd April, the rest of us sit patiently like drooling puppies outside the butcher shop.

I was fairly impartial to the iPad until I was seduced with the ninja NLP tactics of one Ed Dale at his recent Coming Home conference in Melbourne. And now I’m quietly making a list of all the reasons I NEED one.

If you’re living in another country, however, there may be a way to get you an iPad almost as soon as they come out in the US. I’m a patient bloke, so I’m happy to wait till late April when I’ll camp my ass outside an Apple shop once they make it to Aussie shores. Also, I want to make sure I grab a 3G version that works with a local telco provider.

But if you’re an early adopter, indeed the earliest of adopted, here’s how you get your iPadat the same time  the Yanks do: get your own U.S. address for free.

Yes, you read correctly. There are services available that will provide you with a United States postal address, so when you come to the check out page in the Apple US online store, you can can indeed type in your US postal address with a straight face.

“That’s great!” I hear you cry, “but how do I collect my iPad from my U.S. postal address wise guy?”. There’s no such thing as a free lunch; when I said you can get a U.S. postal address for free – you can, but you then pay for the forward service that’s attached. It’s a very cleaver service setup by postage and shipping companies to get you to use their services.

There are a bunch of companies that provide package forwarding services, just Google “us package forwarding” and you’ll find a heap. However there is one provider who are specifically forwarding iPads. Check out Shipito’s iPad 32Gb offer and order your iPad before any other early adopter get’s their nerdy sweaty mits on one.

Edit: Thanks to Ben Barren who brought up an important point: what about the charger? Well, apparently the iPad will use the same charger as the iPhone and iPod: check out the Apple discussion forum for details.