I have a Pre!  Yay.  I'll tell you everything but the first thing you need to know is that everything you've heard is true, and more.  After 24 hours I would say it is probably the most amazing device I've ever owned.

Sunday I called around and nobody in L.A. had a Pre left in stock, every Sprint store, every Best Buy was sold out.  Monday I was in Vista so I called around and nobody in San Diego had a Pre left in stock either.  I put my name on about fifteen waiting lists, resigned to wait.  Then yesterday afternoon the Sprint store in Encinitas sent me an email: they had a Pre for me!  Turns out they were operating a mini lottery instead of a FIFO queue - why, I cannot say - and they had one Pre left, and so despite getting on the list late it was mine.  And so I dashed down and bought the little guy, including a Touchstone charger (yes they had one of those for me too) and a car kit and so on.

The phone was activated in the store and I walked out with everything working.  I setup Exchange in about 15 seconds (just gave my username / password / domain / server URL) and poof, everything synced, and everything worked.  Email, Contacts, Calendar, perfectly synced and functional.  The only thing I couldn't copy over was old SMS threads.  The learning curve was shallow and I was a Pre demoer in no time.

I'll have more to say after a while, but my initial impressions are that the screen is great, the keyboard is great (better than the Centro), WebOS is really cool (just like you've seen), the camera is unexpectedly great (that self-portrait above was taken in a dark elevator without flash [yes, the Pre camera has a flash]), and the fit and finish are better than I was led to believe by some picky reviewers.  I really like the size and roundness and feel and clickiness and everything, and the light weight.  My hands just want to take it out and play with it all the time, it feels so cool.  I am worried about battery life; I love that it charges from USB, so you only need a cable if you're carrying your laptop, but I had to do that mid-day today, and that scared me a little.

Oh, one more really cool thing, which doesn't really have to do with the Pre but with getting a Pre, I bought a new Plantronics Pro bluetooth headset, and it is amazing, qualitatively better than any bluetooth headset I've tried to use.  It even works (gasp!) in a car... while driving.

Well enough gushing.  I have one, it works, I'll be using the heck out of it, and you will hear all about it.  Stay tuned.