First reviews are in.

The first reviews from credible journalists – Walt Mossberg at the WSJ and David Pogue at the NYT – are in and the biggest surprise is that Apple did not lie about the battery life. Both journalists report nearly 12 hours on one charge compared to the “up to 10 hours” claimed.

Mossberg points out that the OS has no multitasking but that is coming for the iPhone so expect it on the iPad soon. And Pogue makes the good point that nerds will hate it because it’s simple and Just Works. These are the same people who adulate keyboards (over which they delight in eating pizza) and mice (they have two – one on their desktop and another eating their crumbs below) so we can move on.

From a personal perspective I have done a quick spot of upgrading to prepare for my iPad. Quick and free upgrades to iPhoto and iTunes on my MacPro get the desktop ready to ‘speak’ to the device. Then I blew some serious coin, meaning an additional $5 per month, to increase my AT&T Uverse broadband speed to something about half the speed available to the rest of the civilized world. The upgrade took all of 5 minutes before becoming available. You tune in Uverse using Safari, tell them you want more speed and it’s done without any need to wait a month for a technician. 5 minutes later.

As the 32gB iPad I am getting is wifi only I thought I might as well speed it up. A quick word about AT&T’s digital Uverse service. Every nerd likes to trash the Telephone Company for its many coverage and capacity issues caused by the wild popularity of the iPhone which, in America, runs on AT&T only. I do not think that is fair. First, as a little remarked piece of (rare) excellent journalism in the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, much of the bottleneck problem with the iPhone and AT&T was the cause of …. poor wireless application design by Apple! AT&T sent in a team to teach Apple how to do it right and expects improvements. Of course, they dare not admit to this for to question the sanctity of Apple’s programmers would doubtless incur the wrath of Mr. Jobs. And Apple’s market capitalization is, if you can believe this, larger than AT&T’s:

I have been using Uverse for a couple of months now and while the installation made a root canal seem like a fun time, the ability to change your service level for TV and broadband from your keyboard is pretty special. No more waiting all day for the technician who forgets to show up. And yes, you can simultaneously record several shows of the crap that passes for television in the US using the optional DVR (made by Motorola) whose integration into the remote and general reliability is as good as anything from TiVo. Oh! joy. The service works well and has only gone down once – compared to weekly failures I enjoyed from my former provider, Charter Cable. Uverse is available in civilization – meaning the big coastal cities and Chicago – but don’t expect it any time soon in your area if you think grits are a delicacy. And it you think the Telephone Company doesn’t know technology, how do you explain providing broadband and digital TV over copper cables designed and installed one hundred years ago? It’s no accident that the old Bell Labs boasted more Nobel laureates in its ranks than any other organization. Yes, the company is big and unwieldy, often frustratingly slow and bureaucratized (thanks to excessive regulation which constrains competition) but this sort of innovation makes you think well of America’s future.

Finally, the reviews published today confirm what the sneak videos taken on the day Jobs presented the device to the press a while back suggested. The device is ‘blindingly fast’ (Goatbeard’s words, not mine) – another pleasant surprise.

Tomorrow I shall disclose the carefully planned strategy our eight year old and I have devised to beat the crowds when we pick ours up on Saturday morning. And, of course, you can expect photo coverage from your intrepid reporter of the day that will change the way we use computers for ever. I don’t know about you, but I propose to be a part of that change. Stay tuned!

By the way, easily the best piece yet written on the iPad is by English humorist Stephen Fry in, of all things, the otherwise culturally arid desert known as Time magazine. And yes, he gets to meet God.

On a happy note for AAPL investors, you can expect MSFT and AAPL to swap places in this table of America’s largest companies by market capitalization within 12 months: