We Interrupt this Lifehaker article to bring you Kindle!

Sorry friends, The Lifehacker feature got canceled because of this.

When I first heard about this device I thought "Wow, a Sony Reader with wireless access." And was glad that someone was here to stomp on Sony. But for some reason the device stuck in my mind. I couldn't figure out why until I was about to go to bed last night, and I realized why I was so captivated.

Amazon has made the first working Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

What makes this more than just another reader is the free access to Wikipedia. Suddenly you have the best reference on the web without the web, without the computer, without a crappy little Treo screen (or a beautiful--but still little-- iPhone Screen) and without a monthly bill for service or worrying about hotspots and the like. You can be Ford Prefect and find out everything you need to know about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from the beach while chatting with other froods that really know where their towels are.

I'm not saying it's perfect, because it isn't. eInk technology does a horrible switch to black, then back to white thing when you turn pages, something I'm hoping they are working on. But the idea of a simple, intelligible, legible reader that you can take with you is something that you just can't deny has possibility. This is clearly a first edition.

What surprised me is the negative press the Kindle is getting. A lot of it is people complaining about what it doesn't do, which isn't surprising. These people want everything to do everything, which is silly. Specialization breeds efficiency. The Swiss Army Knife or Leatherman Tool is useful in their place, which is to give you something that works in an emergency. The Leatherman has a knife, but I don't use it when I'm cooking. It also has a pair of pliers, but I don't use them when I'm fixing a computer unless I don't have any other, better pliers at hand. Multi-tools do everything poorly. Focused tools do one thing well. Specialization breeds efficiency. This is why the iPod has done so well, and it's not surprising that the Kindle is being called the iPod for books.

The other type of negative press is the "electronic will never be as good as print" type. My non-Luddite friend Drew has eloquently taken this stand. I will certainly agree that I would rather have, say, PHP in a Nutshell in paper than PDF. In fact I have both and use the paper version almost exclusively. This is because my fingers "know" where the sections I use the most are in the book and I can flip to them almost immedately, But how much of that is just muscle memory? The PDF version suffers from the Leatherman problem, where I have to find the file on my computer, open Acrobat reader, search for what I want, by which time It's quicker to just go to the php manual online. But how much of that would be cured by having a dedicated reader? Try as I might, I can't see a compelling reason to keep my books physical, provided the screen quality on the electronic reader is as good as the print quality of a physical book.

There is of course the outcry of the people who have an entire library of physical books, and who worry about ebooks becoming outdated, which a physical book "never does". I too have a whole lot of physical books, and I'm not throwing them out anytime soon. No one ever said you have to. Just add one more slot. And books do fall apart. This is why I've been through three copies of Lord of the Rings and five Hithhiker's Guides (actually two were stolen, only three were worn out).

Lastly, of course, there is Richard Stallman. He's mad because Jeff Bezos might make money on this thing and it isn't called GNU/Kindle.

Still, I'm excited. This is the first step toward something that actually makes sense and works for people without them working around it. If I had the $400 to shell out I would be getting one of these, but since I don't I'll have to wait until Kindle 2.0 (Ignite?) comes out.