Abandoning ebooks...hahaha
Well, I for one have abandoned pbooks. At least, pnovels. Anything that is just text or that does not gravitate around pictures has been abandoned. I see just one reason to go on reading paper books: unavailability in digital format (well, yeah, smell too, but that can be fixed). When I read pbooks, I would take what I could find, which when you read foreign books is not that much. Buying from Amazon from Spain (there is no Amazon.es) duplicated the book price, and I would just get paperbacks.
The paper quality, font size and the like I had to accept as it was. Furthermore, Paperback is not the best format to read long books. They are hard to handle one handed, and you normally end up reading curved pages in awkward positions and angles. Now, all that was taken for granted and passed unnoticed, since it had always been that way.
Hardcovers offer better quality, but are heavier and more cumbersome to handle. Whoever has read a fat hardcover in bed goes probably through the same process. One page laying to one side, the next to the other side, and sometimes with the book on top. The book is only balanced when you are reading the central part of the text, the pages levitate if not pinned...
I shifted to reading on an Axim X50v three years ago. Boy, how I loved it. I could read one handed in any position, whether in bed, sitting, or in the restroom (one of my favorite places, pity my legs go numb
). The drawback, if any, was that I lost text format. Nevertheless, I shifted for good and I even got in digital format books that I already had in paper.
This January I got my 505, which totally displaced the Axim. Hardcovers normally have a good paper quality that displays better than that of the Reader, but my believe is that many books I read are not worth the extra price. Apart from that difference, which does not make the Reader's image bad at all, The reader offers just advantages.
Of course, you have a point when saying you prefer free paper books to paid ebooks, but that is not a format issue. Would you prefer free pbooks to free ebooks? If not, you are one of us all the same.
Ereaders offer you customized font and paragraph format you can easily standardize to anything you read (This is ever important for people, aged or not, with sight problems), perfect and comfortable (lightweight) one handed reading position in any situation, amazing portability and simplified and extended instant purchase of books. Apart from that, you are reducing your use of paper, which, no matter how romantic, is not precisely one of the most ecologic products we use.
If you still do prefer paper books, then you probably are just rejecting the current technology. E ink can only get better. For most of us, when rejecting one ebook Reader, it is just in favor of another brand Reader, not in favor of going back to paper. That won't happen. E ink could be (and will be) better, but it is already pretty good.
Anyway, I think you can share your thoughts with us whenever and wherever you want, since we often go offtopic ourselves (not that I think your posts are offtopic in this thread at all, they are just a little bizarre
), except maybe in the technical threads. Feel free to comment whatever, whenever, and this thread is as good as any to share your thoughts.
In the end, it is reading that matters, not the tool.