Personally, I think e-books will be practical when these requirements are met:
  1. The reader isn't bulky.
  2. Random access is easy.

  1. I read Safari regularly on my Zaurus SL-5500. It is a hell of a lot less bulky than 500 pages of paper. ;)
  2. I like the ability to bookmark multiple pages and then access them like a TOC. I feel having a TOC, topic index, "goto page", and search beats your version of random access.

We use books the way we do because their form makes it convenient to do so. Using an electronic device (assuming the design is tolerable and these features exist) is a question of rehabituating yourself. For some reason, people don't like the unfamiliar. :)

--
Allolex

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Re: (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons? by allolex
in thread (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons? by revdiablo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.