The wait for Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX is finally over. The folks who camped outside of bookstores all night to be the first ones to own these beauties were rewarded today. Shortages were reported in some parts of the country as mobs of excited .NET developers made the iPhone launch seem like just another over-hyped gadget for sale. You can learn more about the book online here.

Fortunately, as with the iPhone before it, supplies of this must-have technical bible have not run out. Even if you were unwilling to pay some teenager to wait in line for your copy (assuming your time was too valuable to waste waiting in line yourself), you can still find copies of Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX online at Amazon.com and other stores, or in your favorite brick and mortar book store. Given the hype around these, you may want to buy one for yourself, one for your buddy across the cubicle farm, and a couple more to sell on eBay when supplies finally do give out in the face of the insatiable demand for the knowledge offered by this book.

It’s almost annoying how everybody in the .NET world won’t stop talking about this thing. I mean, really, there is other stuff going on in the world of .NET. Nonetheless, you can find more opinions about the book here, and here, and here and here for starters, and of course if you visit your favorite blog you’ll probably quickly become annoyed at how the topic of conversation shifts to this book faster than US news agencies switch back to telling us about Paris Hilton.

All kidding aside, if you’re starting to work with ASP.NET AJAX, and you want to minimize the learning curve needed to become productive, this book was written for you. Check it out – if it saves you an hour of searching for something on the Internet, it’s either paid for itself or you need a raise.