Amazon's Kindle - the Future of Reading ... or just a dumb ugly gadget?

Newsweek's cover story is about Amazon's Kindle, a reading device that debuts tomorrow.

The Kindle is Steve Bezos' attempt to revolutionize the art of ... reading. Like many bloggers commenting on the new gadget even before it's been seen in public I'm skeptical this approach will succeed for Amazon. They are trying to charge for stuff we all expect for free. Also, they are offering what appears to be an inferior gadget to a laptop.

Thus laptop folks won't buy this and carry around two gadgets, non-laptop folks will buy a laptop before a Kindle, and folks who don't really like the idea of technology taking over journalism are hardly likely to buy a high gadget instead of more books. This leaves.... nobody to buy them.

Even Newsweek's breathless "Future of Reading" cover story suggests what is probably the single biggest challenge to the Kindle. Author Steven Levy notes that the Kindle is up against some formidable competition:

... superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget in a Best Buy: the book.