For recreational reading and dictionaries, I think e-books are far superior. I can’t carry around a dictionary all the time, let alone several. Even a single paperback is thicker and bulkier than a decent e-book.
For textbooks, academic articles and other technical writing, I find it helpful to be able to mark it up and write in the margins. I don’t think any e-book reader currently offers that option (unless you use Acrobat on a tablet PC), but once that’s possible, I can see myself switching to e-books for all types of books.
If the Kindle were under $200 I’d have bought it yesterday. At $400 I’m hesitating - especially since I already have a new tablet PC on order.
I’d do a bit of both - I like paper books, but I can see that there would be times when it would be convenient to have a decent ebook reader (I think Sony’s offering is better than the Amazon one, but I’m not sure either are actually good enough for me yet) - It would be fantastic not to have to keep paper manuals and documentation for all my stuff, and it would be great for reference works like dictionaries - I’d even use it for recreational reading on journeys and so on.
I’d like voice-activated page turning and searching too - I wouldn’t use it very often, but there are times when you’re trying to assemble something with both hands and leaf through the manual at the same time - being able to leave the manual on the desk and talk to it would be interesting.
But I won’t be investing in one of these until a more open solution comes out - I like the idea of being able to buy my eBooks online with no fuss, I just don’t see why I should be tied to one vendor.
I like real dead tree books but am slavering for a good e-reader.
However I expect major savings on any e-book over the retail price. I can buy a £10 novel in dead tree format for £6.99 from Amazon and I would not expect to pay more than a fiver for the e-version.
Otherwise it’s no deal, particularly if the reader costs a giant wedge.
I dont have that extensive a E library yet [if I had unlimited time, a scanner and good OCR software I could slap my 5000 or so books into mobipocket, but at this point in time I get my books offline. yay webscriptions, fictionwise, project gutenberg etc!]
I read previously on a series of palm platforms [hm, palm 500, palm 3 and treo 600 and 650] but now have a new moto 9m, and it is da bomb. I can go online, i have music, books a couple rock videos and a movie on my micro sd chip, and am thinking of getting a couple more micro sd chips so i can have a small stockpile of movies for it!
Now if only they could make a moto 9m play world of warcraft… although if they just had a chat program that would let me log into guild chat I would be thrilled!
Give me a real book every time, for the reasons everyone listed above. I’m currently reading *Dracula * in e-book format, and I’d much rather have it in print.
I prefer real books. I have a couple of first edition collections that I enjoy, so I’m already biased in favor of page and cloth.
I really don’t like reading off a screen for too long. At my job, when I have to edit a document, I’ll print it off and work on it hard copy. Later I might type in the edits, but it’s easier for me to process reading off a page. I also read the daily paper rather than get my news off the computer.