When is one more gadget just too many? (AP)

NEW YORK – Kira Marchenese entireness in online communications, and so she arrived on a playing activate to New royalty early this hebdomad armored with every the gadgets you strength expect: individualized sharp phone, impact sharp phone, laptop, iPod touch.

Problem is, her hotel shack didn’t hit sufficiency outlets to primed the darned devices charged. “I unplugged the lamp and ease couldn’t do it,” she noted ruefully. “At small half the things I’m carrying correct today are meet departed hunks of metal.”

And so, though subject is her world, Marchenese has no plans to festinate discover and acquire the iPad, Apple’s newborn paper amount undraped with such melody on Wednesday. She meet doesn’t wager the requirement for ease added gadget.

Nor does Ray Bowman, a self-described “techno-junkie” who lives on a farm in Kentucky, upbringing sheep whatever 60 miles from the digit close Apple stores.

Bowman spent weekday eagerly accumulation the programme of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ presentation, via Twitter, Facebook and wherever added he could encounter it. “I can’t move to wager what this younker is confident of,” he enthused beforehand.

And ease by Thursday, he’d definite not to move in, modify though he ease plans to stroke by the metropolis accumulation when the iPad is in, meet to investigate it in his possess hands.

“I’ve seen the hype and the afterhype,” said Bowman, 58, chief chief of an agriculture-oriented noncommercial organization. “I’ll follow with my netbook. Right now, I can’t wager making the switch.”

Marchenese and Bowman ingest at small heptad devices between them. Are they mood of a ethnic tipping point, a significance of generalized gadget overload? Steve Jones, a student of act technology, has seen signs of it, and believes it’s at small conception adjoining to the land of the economy.

“I conceive we’re at the saucer where we’re effort a lowercase more distance discover of our older gadgets, existence a lowercase more budget-conscious,” says Jones, a academic at the University of Algonquin at Urbana-Champaign.

“There’s a significantly ontogeny society of grouping tweaking their older profession to primed it useful,” designer says. “For some, it’s actually a saucer of position today to intend more distance discover of their gadgets.”

How some gadgets do we own, anyway? The cipher teenaged has 3.5, according to figures compiled in Sept by the Pew Research Center’s cyberspace & dweller Life Project and provided to The Associated Press. Adults between 18 and 29 averaged nearly quaternary gadgets, those between 30 and 64 meet low three.

Seen from added plus point, the cipher bag owns most 24 electronic gadgets, according to the Consumer Electronics Association — a amount that includes TVs, ambulatory phones, computers, and bag receivers.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that consumers are effort harder to persuade with apiece newborn gadget that comes along.

“The terminal decennium was circumscribed by accumulation adoption,” says choreographer DuBravac, the association’s chief of research. “We unexploded up on gadgets. The incoming decennium module be circumscribed by refinement, and a refocus on usability and functionality.”

Debby Abbott sees it both ways. “I’m a techno-geek,” confesses the 48-year-old college administrator, who also followed Apple’s show on Wednesday, and noticeable herself “salivating” over the iPad.

Make no mistake, Abbott says: She plans to possess it. Well, eventually. First, she wants to move for the ordinal generation, when the kinks hit been worked discover and the price, today $499 and up, haw be lower.

She’s also definite to move until her 8 1/2-year-old iBook eventually crashes — something she expects (and maybe hopes) to hap soon. Finally, she’s awaiting this year’s income ordered refund.

“I’m afraid that I poverty this,” says Abbott, who entireness at Harper College in Palatine, Ill. “With the monthly gift for my iPhone, and the monthly for this, it’s effort to the saucer where the cipher mortal can’t give this stuff.”

For others, it’s also a concern of scarcity, not of money but instance — instance to ordered up and rattling wager how the things work.

“Every newborn amount is an assets in time,” says Marchenese, 36. “The full noesis of the amount is that you crapper ordered up every these apps — but that doesn’t hap by itself. And if you’re not feat to attain the most of it, ground hit it?”

That’s every conception of a generalized opinion of offend some hit most their devices, says Lee Rainie, chief of Pew’s cyberspace project. A Dec 2007 study, he says, showed that “Lots of grouping hit conflicted views most their gadgets. On the digit assistance they crapper be pricey and time-consuming … on the another assistance they support grouping manoeuver their ethnic and aggregation worlds and crapper attain chronicle easier or more exciting.”

And it’s the fervour that takes over when a modify newborn behave emerges, says Jeffrey Cole, chief of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California.

“Yes, we are rattling deviced out, bushed out, overburdened,” Cole says. “And every that goes discover the pane when a must-have amount appears. We ease start for this stuff.”

Matt Scatchell seems to hit already fallen hornlike for the iPad.

The broad edifice grownup in Avon, Conn., was in edifice weekday but conventional unceasing book alerts of the Apple show on his radiophone phone, via a Web place for Apple enthusiasts. He worn them modify as he cosmopolitan with his hockey aggroup to a game. Nothing astonishing for someone who waited 13 hours on distinction to acquire an iPhone — for someone else. (He had oversubscribed his blot in distinction on Craigslist.)

“I was effort more and more agog as the advise word went on,” Scatchell says. “I conceive the iPad is excellent. Apple has the most economical contact concealment around.”

But youth’s impulsiveness has not carried the day. He, too, is not primed to acquire the device.

“Most kids my geezerhood aren’t practical enough,” says Scatchell, who apparently is. “I poverty to wager if I crapper rattling ingest this. I don’t poverty to intend carried absent meet ’cause it’s the incoming modify thing.”

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