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People are going to purchase ebooks for convenience more than durability and extended use. I think the attitude towards ebooks is going to be more along the lines of "expendable" rather than something they'll keep for the rest of their lives. People still like paper books. As much as I love my ebook collection, I love paper books even more. The problem, of course, is transporting them. I like fitting a massive number of books on a small device like a palm pilot or the Sony Reader. So far these devices do a poor job of replicating paper books in the "reference" area, though. Searching through ebooks on a computer is pretty fast and simple. Searching through them on portable devices is, I have found, slow and more annoying than helpful. I also enjoy the smell of paper books and the feel of the pages between my fingers. This has nothing to do with content, of course, but book stores are like heaven to me. I can spend hours upon hours in a book store and later wonder where the time went. Realistically, the ease of use that comes with a paper book simply can't be replicated with an ebook. Ebooks will come closer and get better with time, I just have a hard time imagining anyone in the future claiming to have a personal library that is only on his computer. It just isn't the same.
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