Despite this, I don't think hardcopy books are dead. I know a lot of people talk about digital reading as the new "book", and the article hints at it, but the aesthetic appeal of a book is good enough that I'll keep buying them.

Books are great. Borders was not. How it has managed to hang on to life in the US for this long is beyond me.

European/UK Borders were a totally different beast, in my experience. Then again, I lived in US Borders' hometown, so of course their local stores were the nicest.

Yeah, borders filing bankruptcy a while ago was sad news. I wasn't a fan of their prices, but they had decent wifi, comfy chairs (compared to B&N's wood crap), and Seattle's Best buy 4 get the 5th free was great for my coffee addiction.

I just bought the latest 007 book (Deaver's Carte Blanche) in hard cover at $25. I lvoe a real book. But Border's discount prices are over priced. If I want it right then, I get it at B&N. Elsewise, I go to Amazon.com (which has a huge shipping facility in my hometown of Hebron, KY).

Why did I read the title as "Attention happy hardcore fans"?

Because you're disturbed, ulytau.

Yes, I am :(

HYPER, HYPER!!!

Yeah I'm not moving to e-books - I like being able to do what I want with my books.

Sacred I think you don't know what happy hardcore is. It's a music genre. Get your mind out of the gutter!

OK....fine...I *love* having my hardcopy book on my bookshelves....but....come on! If you loved hard copy, you would be playing Diplomacy on a board, not the internet. I exchanged the new Nook Touch with my wife for our recent anniversary...and I will never go back to buying a physical book. I love going up north for the weekend and taking 150 books in a 1/4 inch of space. And there is nothing enchanting about holding a book open whileyou lie in bed....in fact, if you interested in the feel of a book in your hand, then buy a cover for your e-reader. If you are interested in the smell of a usty book...then you have issues. If you are more interested in easily acquired literature that you can take anywhere en-masse and read on a printed "page" that isn't offensive to the eye....then buy an e-reader.

Like I said...I love owning my physical books....but I will never buy one again. Borders was overpriced and, amazingly, for their size, I could never find the book I wanted. I would read Book 1 of a series...and then next book they sold was book 4....I will *NEVER* have that problem on my Nook.

Not to mention....free book (Gutenburg project....and other sources). Borders? I loved you once....but you also killed the local book stores I once loved....so good riddance to you!!!

I'm not sure how wanting paper books translates into the board game, that analogy just doesn't work. And there is something to love about the smell of the printed page. Walking into a used bookstore is divine.

I also think "I get to carry 100 books around with me" is a terrible selling point of digital reader. I consider myself at-times a heavy reader, but even on week-long trips, carrying three books with me is enough.

eInk works. It's great. But it has a long way to go before its the quality of paper. I demoed Freescale's eInk controller at CES and it blew me away, so there's definitely a future where I'd prefer eInk over the real deal, but its not there yet.

Anyone that thinks reading on an LCD is better than paper is lying to themselves. Tablet computers like the iPad are not the future of the written word. And with eInk and LCD being ill compatible technologies, there won't ever be the "one" device.

That all being said, musicians really need to be pushing for more eInk sheet music. It is superb in every way. No more page turning and that's where carrying 1000's songs on one page is important.

LCD sucks when it comes to reading but eInk e-reader has the upper hand over paper in more areas than only sheet music. You don't have to print out electronic study materials or read them on eyeraping monitors with it. When working on a paper or thesis, you can have all the refference material ready at hand everywhere with it - plus you have internet connection for looking further. You don't have to carry heavy and big-sized books with it. You can handle reading with only one hand, a killer feature in public transportation. A book is easier to skim through and is more durable, though. Needless to say, both medias will coexist peacefully.

Definitely agree, but have you browsed on the current eInk devices? It's not exactly convienient. I think the device you've imagined for research and study just doesn't exist yet. The technology doesn't redraw the screen at an acceptable rate and publishers aren't really interested in moving textbooks to digital format, its not as profitable.

I know the technology improvements exist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n2xxqMQyfY) but they've not gone mainstream yet. I'm not sure what's needed to break the horrendous textbook markup and edition scam, but hopefully it happens.

Give me a 10-inch flexible kindle that allows pen input for note taking, and I'll carry it alongside a tablet computer. Until then I'll utilise a free B&N subscription (try your area code + 8675309) and make the best of used books.

I did, that's how I regularly play this game after all :) Yes, the comfort is low but apart from a laptop, my nook is the only mobile device capable of browsing so a minor hardship is not a problem for me. Maybe I'm a statistical outlier in this aspect but the points I made were from my personal experience, that's the way I use the e-reader.

The redraw rate is not much of an issue, firstly since it isn't actually so bad and secondly my nook has the small touch LCD display and such a combo combines the best of two worlds - eInk for reading large texts in sunlight, LCD for coloured browsing without need for light.

The huge problem for scholar usage is bad support of mathematical expressions and graphs in non-default zoom mode. The only useful solution as of now is buying an e-reader with bigger display. Also, the lack of up-to-date textbooks is atrocious as you said. However, Guttenbergs and such are full of free texts on mathematics, statistics or philosophy from giants of the past. And physicists can definitely use e-reader when cutting throught the preprints and arXiv. The technology is not there yet but it is certainly capable of outperforming or synergizing with paper books for certain purposes.

I thought about the color nook, but then started looking at the tablets and realized they are more capable and just as readable as the color nook. Now, I might consider the new Kindle with the larger screen, but it's still over $350 and I can buy a lot of paperbacks for that price point.

Well, color nook doesn't utilize eInk so I treat it as a sort of unterereader, it really is a competition for tablets, not paper books.

Ereaders are nice, but you don't want to use one to level your table....

Yeah, I really can't imagine why B&N thought they had a hope switching over to the tablet business. Motorola got it wrong, Toshiba knows they're going to get it wrong, Acer can't decide if they want to even try, and Samsung got it mostly right but Google's taking so long to give the ice cream out that no one cares. And of course Apple's got it, but they're so closed process that the tablet won't become the new business tool without some competition.

@Geofram- it's ok by me. We sell chips to most of them! Let them try!

One big selling point for e-readers for me right now - I'm getting ready to move next weekend, just finished packing up ~250 books spread out into 8 boxes. it'll probably take me 3 trips to move all of that in my car.

On the other hand, I can fit my kindle into my pocket. Judging by the amount of space the current books on it use, I could probably get around 800-900 books on it altogether. (btw, a significant fraction of my ebooks don't have DRM)

I can definitely attest that the kindle is very readable. it really is as easy on the eyes as a newspaper.

Being a pretty hardcore reader I was pretty skeptical about e-readers as well, but since I was given one as a gift, along with several gift cards, I thought I'd give it a shot. Since than I've read more books on my kindle than I have real books.

I've been pretty resistant to the idea of selling my books, but this upcoming move has got me seriously contemplating it now. It'd be nice to be able to use those shelves for something that I mostly just look at now.