Behold, Microsoft's Courier project

Attention Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Apple Phantom Tablet, iPhone, iPod Touch, netbooks, laptops, Newtons, Palm Pilots, calculators, spiral-bound notebooks, loose-leaf paper, pen, pencil and life as we know it:

This. Is. The. Future.

By now you've probably seen Gizmodo's leak of Microsoft's Courier project. If not, take two 7-inch multitouch tablets, sandwich them together like a book, throw in a camera and amaze the heck out of technophiles everywhere.

We wanted to sleep on things and try to digest exactly what we'd seen. And, like everyone else, we're blown away. Surprised it's from Microsoft? Don't be. These are the guys (and gals) who brought us Microsoft Surface. And apologies for beating this drum yet again, but add the Zune HD to that list. Microsoft can do UI. It can do hardware. And it can marry the two.

That said, remember that this is far from a production run. Far, far from it, we imagine, though Giz says it's in the "late prototype" stage. And there's practically no way this couldn't be completely out of the price range of 99 percent of those who'd love to use one. (Right?) Please, please, Microsoft, prove us wrong.

Says Giz:

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft's brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who's spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

Says us:

Wow.

Head on over to Giz and check out more pics and a stunning video, then head back here and let us know what you think.