Asked about trends at this year's Armory Show, Hauser & Wirth director Neil Wenman volunteered that he was struck by the number of sales the gallery made today by showing clients images on an iPad. "It is really changing the way things are done."

The new edition of Apple's iPad was announced yesterday, and, as though on cue, the machines were ubiquitous at this year's Armory Show. Some dealers had several of them scattered on the desks in their booths. At New York dealer Sean Kelly's booth, one sat on a low marble table, open to an image by artist Callum Innes. Los Angeles dealer Mihai Nicodim could be spotted huddled with a pair of collectors, flipping through images on his iPad.

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Not everyone is thrilled with the gadget. "It's not 100 percent efficient," says Rachel Lehmann of Lehmann Maupin, who says that while the iPad's image quality is great, it is not easy to get the machine to display all of a piece's relevant information alongside it when showing a client. She adds that it's not yet possible to keep the gallery's Art Base program, which keeps track of inventory and consignments, synced with the computers at the gallery.

Nevertheless, she had given in and bought one for the fair. But having a single iPad may put Lehmann in the minority — for the moment the attitude seems to be the more the merrier, and at many booths there appear to be as many iPads as there are salespeople. Paris and Salzburg dealer Thaddeus Ropac has three; New Yorker Andrew Kreps two. "It's the wave of the future," says Kreps. But will he buy the new edition? "No. Why would I need to? Does it fly?"