Buying an iPad

I bought mine from Best Buy. You can do an ATT data plan wherever you get it from where you pay about $15 for 30 days and it's basically "as needed" vs every month having to pay for a service you may not need. At home, my ipad connects to my wireless network, and out of the house a lot of places have free wifi that it connects into. I've had very little need for my data plan...I've only paid for it twice since June. Don't pay a huge amount for a data plan or sign up for a contract unless you know for sure that's the only way you're going to be connecting.

Also, I bought a case that has a keyboard included in it (about $99 for the case and keyboard unit), and I LOVE being able to type on a regular keyboard vs the ipad.

Anita is correct. Best Buy and get the warranty.. It is 100% replacement..
We use Verizon for al of our phones and now the ipad. But I try to use wifi, whenever possible.

Now that I am using my ipad for my business, I may need to bump up my cellular for the ipad. Before when I was just using it for everyday life, I did not need the cellular very often.

It really shouldn't matter where you buy it. They should be the same price regardless.

My husband and I both have ipads and neither one of us has a data plan. If you buy a wifi only version it costs less and then you don't have the cost of the data plan every month. So decide if you really need a data plan or not. 99% of the time when I use mine, I'm somewhere with wifi - home, office, church, hotel, Starbucks, etc.

Also, your phone plan may let you tether you internet service, so you wouldn't need a data plan for the ipad. Unfortunately, my AT&T plan won't let me do that.

Good luck!

The fellows at Best Buy spent an hour and a half with me. I have wifi with cell plan. Got 20% off On train now using it.

you can get the Wifi one (or the Nook version it is a lot cheaper and can accept a microSD card to expand the memory. I think the Kindle Fire can too). Verizon sells a telephone hotspot box for $20/month that makes that PORTABLE little box your wireless router, so you can take that box in the car and your wifi devices work on it wherever there is cell phone access.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=...

Go to Best Buy and see if they have an open box. That's how we got ours and you can still get the warranty. They gave us 10% off the iPad. We have the wifi one only, but the only time we have a problem is in the car, and my husband was able to make his iPhone a Hot Spot and link our wifi iPad to his phone and piggyback on that data plan. We have Verizon.

The warranty is directly from Apple, and will be exactly the same regardless of where you buy it.

My recommendation would be to order a refurbished iPad online directly from Apple. The refurbs are immaculate (they receive a brand new case and battery) and they're just like new and carry the same warranty as a new product, with a better price. I've owned quite a few refurbished Apple products and have yet to be unhappy with a single one.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad/i...

No matter where you buy the iPad, you can still take it to the Apple store for any assistance you need. They don't care where you bought it, their objective is to keep you satisfied with the product.

We bought ours at the Apple store and I have to agree with Catherine that they are very helpful there. Not that the other places aren't, but at the Apple store it is their one and only job to help you understand their product. THey aren't selling lots of different brands of things and understand fully the product you are buying. Now I will admit we also bought a desktop the same day so we really wanted to get our desktop there, but I doubt you can really go wrong.

It's the same either way. At the Apple store, they can help you put your e-mail on there, set up iCloud, and that kind of thing, which is always helpful. We have bought all of our things at the Apple store and have been able to set up plans via AT&T (but could have set up w/Verizon etc if we had wanted to - they have all the plans there). You get the exact same warranty everywhere you go.