I have a confession to make: After months of ripping the device, I bought a Kindle the other day. And I really like it.

Now, let me be clear: The reasons I ripped it still remain. The thing is entirely too expensive at $360 and I still don’t believe that it can survive long term as phones and tablet computers will destroy its place in the market. But for now, it’s a very nice piece of tech if you can afford it.

So why did I get one? As you may have guessed from my job (blogging), I do quite a bit of reading every single day on the Internet. While I love that, it has pretty much killed my desire to read books/magazines/anything else. But, when I learned the Kindle offered support for Instapaper, a great, simple bookmarking tool that I use to save things to read later, I was immediately sold.

While I love reading stuff online, it really takes a toll on your eyes, obviously. And with the iPhone now on me at all times, that problem is even worse as you’re reading it on a much smaller screen. At night, I lay in bed and read articles that I saved to Instapaper on my iPhone screen — that just wasn’t cutting it. But the Kindle with Instapaper support is genius. Because the display doesn’t have a backlight and uses e-ink, it isn’t like reading on a digital screen at all, but instead is like reading a book or a newspaper — regular print, without any of the print residue. And, thanks to no backlight, you can actually read it outside in sunlight.

Okay, that’s a great feature for someone like me, but still nowhere near worth a $360 price tag. But, now that I’ve been using it for a few days I think I have a new favorite feature: Text-to-speech. Like most people, I thought this might be a lame gimmick of the new Kindle 2, but having used it now fairly extensively, I can safely say that I love it. Sure, it’s far from perfect, but it’s pretty damn good. Especially when I find myself laying it bed wanting to read but sick of reading after doing it all day. Yes, it works with things saved on Instapaper as well.

If the Kindle were like $99, I think it would be one of the hottest devices out there. If it were $199, it’d be a pretty solid buy. But at $360, I still only recommend it if you either love reading (but don’t care about having physical books), or are in pretty much the same boat as myself, as I described above.

I still doubt the Kindle will exist in 5 years, but for now it’s a pretty nice tool that has so far been able to drag me away from my computer and even the iPhone. At least for 30 minutes a day.