Planning to get your hands on the original iPad? Perhaps at a nice discounted price directly from the Apple online store? It might be too late, at least if you’re looking for cheap, WiFi-only models. When Apple announced the iPad 2 on March 2, we noted the company was getting rid of stock in its Clearance webpage; the original iPad was sold at $399 — $100 off, not a bad deal if you didn’t care about the new features of the iPad 2.

Now the Apple online store is selling the last units available, and they are WiFi + 3G 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB models. The most expensive ones, and likely the most difficult ones to get rid of in a few weeks. Still, if you really want to get a 3G iPad 1 that runs on AT&T’s network, head over here and click the Buy button. [via Macgasm]

The Smart Cover is undoubtedly one of the reasons why people will consider upgrading to the iPad 2: it’s lightweight, it’s got magnets, it automatically attaches to the device to cover its screen and also happens to have a microfiber cloth for cleaning purposes. It doubles as a stand to prop your iPad for typing or movie watching, and thanks to the hardware implemented by Apple it can wake or put the iPad’s display to sleep. It’s genius.

Those people who don’t want to upgrade to the iPad 2 just yet, however, might be out of luck when trying to “retrofit” the Smart Cover for the iPad 1. The original iPad doesn’t have magnets, nor does it come with a system to automatically recognize whether or not a cover is lifted off the screen. Plus, it’s slightly heavier and it’s got a different design lacking tapered edges. Many thought it would be impossible to use a Smart Cover with the iPad 1.

It turns out though, with a bit of hacking and custom magnets it is possible to “install” the Smart Cover on the iPad 1. By placing a series of magnets on the iPad 1′s flat side so the Smart Cover’s hinge can fit, the guys at The Russians Used A Pencil managed to make it all work together. Sure, the iPad doesn’t automatically wake from sleep and the stand functionality is a little bit off because of the old design, but it works.

To place the magnets, I stuck them first to the magnetized hinge of the Smart Cover. I slid them around until they became locked into a position. This ended being asymmetrical, but I didn’t mind. I then lined up the cover with the iPad and used masking tape to mark where the magnets should be placed. I wanted this to be a somewhat permanent solution, so I used super glue to affix the magnets to the iPad. If you are not so daring, or want to test it out to make sure you like it, just use transparent tape. Even though the super glue keeps the magnets secure and in place, they are actually pretty easy to remove by just “chipping” them off with a flathead screwdriver and a very light tap of the hammer.

You’ll need glue to attach the magnets to the iPad, and I’m pretty sure the whole “automatic aligning process” isn’t as magical as Apple’s implementation in the iPad 2. Still, check out the video below if you, too, want to have a Smart Cover on your original 2010 iPad. [via The Brooks Review]
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iLounge reports of a series of data activation issues experienced by original iPad owners when trying to upgrade the AT&T service for the iPad 2. As noted by the iLounge staff, an iPad 2 registered with a an existing, fully paid AT&T data service failed to activate; the second iPad 2 unit, set up with a new account, activated “almost immediately”. AT&T is offering two data plans for the iPad with the first one starting at 250 MB (at $14.99 per month) and a second tier with 2 GB traffic at $25 per month.

iLounge details the two issues original iPad owners may run into:

First, the iPad 2 will not activate. Second, the user will either have to manually swap the Micro-SIM cards between the iPad and iPad 2 units, or AT&T will disable the iPad’s Micro-SIM in order to allow the iPad 2’s Micro-SIM to work. The AT&T representative claimed that a user who chooses the latter option will have to buy a replacement card should they want to restore 3G service to the older model, as the first Micro-SIM will no longer be usable.

To enable the service on multiple iPads, AT&T customers will need to set up different accounts as the carrier’s system isn’t able to register two devices at once. While Apple didn’t make any specific mention of iPad 2 WiFi + 3G upgrade plans for iPad 1 owners, many expected the procedure to be simple and easy as swapping the SIM cards at any time with the same account on multiple devices.

Surprise: the iPad 2 running iOS 4.3 is faster than the original iPad running iOS 4.2. According to CNET UK, which had the chance to run a JavaScript SunSpider benchmark test on the iPad 2 during a brief demo at San Francisco, the iPad 2 will outperform the competition and even other Apple’s devices when it comes to web browsing experience and overall snappiness of the browser application. The SunSpider test is usually a good test of how a browser will perform with “heavy” webpages with lots of content and functionalities such as Facebook.

Indeed, Apple itself promotes the new Nitro JavaScript engine that powers Safari on iOS 4.3 as “twice as fast” than its predecessor on iOS 4.2. The original iPad, however, also comes with a slower and non-dual core processor (Apple A4), whilst the iPad 2 will get a dual-core A5 and likely more RAM. These hardware features, together with the iOS 4.3, should make the device a lot faster than iPad 1, iPhone 4 and several Android tablets out in the market or coming soon.

Back to the SunSpider JavaScript test, CNET writes:

Incidentally, when you compare the iPad to the other devices we tested, Android phones and tablets don’t come out particularly well. The Galaxy Tab is more than 3x slower than the iPad 2 in this test, and about 2x slower than the original iPad with the new software. The Google Nexus S smart phone doesn’t fare too well either, at nearly 3x slower than the iPad 2. There’s really good news for iPhone 4 owners out there: when it arrives, iOS 4.3 will deliver a 2.5x speed increase in this test.

The one device we’d like to test, but can’t, is the Motorola Xoom. This tablet has a dual-core processor and runs the latest version of Android, 3.0 Honeycomb.

We will get our iPad 2′s next week and we’ll make sure to run some tests as well to see how the new tablet is really faster than other devices with iOS 4.3 and the iPad 1.

With the iPad 2 about to hit the shelves, what’s going to happen to the original iPad? Well, Apple is apparently getting rid of remaining stock with a discounted price. In the “clearance” section of the Apple Online Store, you can see the 16 GB base model is now available at $100 off the original price. Other models come with a similar discount.

Again, this seems to be a temporary offer until iPad 1 stock runs out. So if you really want one, be quick! [Thanks, Luke]