The i-Want crowd was out in full force today hunting for an iPad 2.

The Apple tablet rolled out in 25 countries today, including Canada.

It's the latest in the battle for your dollars.

The lineups began very early at some locations. At the Apple Store in the Rideau Centre, the first in line arrived at 1:30 a.m. and the line grew all day long

By the time 5 p.m. rolled around, which is when all stores actually started selling the iPad, the line snaked through the mall with a few hundred people. Many of them with iPhones, iPads and Macs. They endured a long wait and there was no guarentee they'd get a unit. Apple refused to say how many units they had for sale.

Zaid Jahoor from Golden Lake in the Upper Ottawa Valley was first in line. He's been saving $100 a month for the last year to pay for his roughly $1,000 purchase.

"It's money well spent. It's a tool that lets me stay on top of media and what is happening and I can use it for my photography and video editing," he said. "It's great. I just love everything about Apple and its products."

The tablet industry is less than a year old. The first iPad really started things now over 30 tablets are out and they come with widely varying degrees of hardware power.

Dave Gallant is an Ottawa software programmer. His firm 42 Bit Solutions has produced an app for the iPad2 and the soon to be released RIM Playbook. His app is a game based on a traditional board game from Nepal. He feels apps will drive tablets.

"The market is fixated on them right now and people want to see what will happen to the iPad. The question is will they buy them and let them sit on the shelf or use them?"

If apps are key then Apple, with 65,000 apps, is the front runner but other platforms are working hard to offer more options.

If you want an iPad its a long wait, two to five weeks the current wait time in the U.S.

There was another tablet released today--Asus and its Transformer model. It matches iPad in a lot of ways, plus the tablet docks with a full size keyboard.

Up to 50 more tablets before will be released before year's end. The next big one is the Microsoft Xoom April 8 and then RIM Playbook April 15th.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Paul Brent