If you were one of the lucky ones to get an pre-international release edition of the Apple iPad, you might have found yourself in the situation that you cannot see the Apple Appstore if you live outside of the USA.
You will see the message; “Cannot connect to the App Store” then “The App store is not available in your country”
This is a very frustrating situation for people who live outside the USA but want to download essential applications like iBooks, iWork and other applications that are exclusive to the iPad that prevent you from using this device as an E-Reader or work device.
There is a temporary work around for this situation which have worked in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
If you have ITunes installed on your PC setup and register your IPad, then log out of your account. On your PC or MAC setup USA Account in ITunes, and for the billing information use an American ITunes Gift card. You can purchase these from EBay, I would only recommend purchasing them from people who live in the USA and have a reputation of over 100. The giftcards are commonly available for $15.00 and $25.00. You can usually ask the seller to email you the PIN number instead of waiting for it to arrive in the post, which internationally can take a week or more.
Once you have your American ITunes Gift card you want to enter a valid American address, complete with postal code. When you complete this process you will be able to access the American App Store and start downloading games, applications and so on.
This process will allow you to access the store only under your American Account, when the App store opens to international users, around the end of May you can use your International account, but you will most likely lose all of your existing applications.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.