If you're looking to get your hands all over the brand spanking, resolutionary new iPad on Friday but worried where the cash is going to come from to feed your Apple habit, then fear not - you could always raise some funds by flogging your old iPad.

And no, we don't mean playing the eBay lottery - we mean genuine hard cash direct from Apple itself, courtesy of its Reuse and Recycling scheme which has been expanded to include the 9.7-inch slate range.

In the States, the programme gives you an Apple gift card for the value of your unwanted iPad but here in Blighty it's real money; paid into your bank from a company Apple has teamed up with called Dataserv.

And, although you could probably fetch a fair few quid more for your previous favourite toy using eBay and the like, Apple will guarantee you a price if your iPad is good nick with much less hassle. It will even offer a sum for a non-working device.

For a 64GB Wi-Fi original iPad, we were offered £142. For an iPad 2 with 3G and the same storage the offer was £277.

As we say, it's not the best price that you're likely to get but it looks like a quick and easy process. The difficult part will be locating a store with the new iPad in stock.