In general I prefer books (or printed manuals) because I find them easier to read, easier to jump from one place to the other, for making annotations, etc. I learned perl from the manual page, back when there was only one manual page, and although I did have a copy of the original Camel many years ago I don't have the book now. As Abigail noted, the important thing for me regarding perl is to know where to look for things when I need them (and I'll second the vote for Stevens' Unix Network Programing!).

I have similar problems with the Sybase documentation - it stretches over 15 or so PDF files, some of which should really be read cover to cover, but reading a 600 page PDF file on a computer screen isn't the most pleasant thing to do, especially when you don't have a 20 year old's eyes anymore. I'd much prefer to have these manuals in paper format, but unfortunately that's not an option anymore. I suppose I could print them, but that would take a month on my little ink-jet :-)

Michael