Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiderMatt
And I think paper is far more permanent than electronic books. A simple hard drive crash or file corruption and your books are gone! With more time and money you can continually back up your drives, but it's not an ideal solution.
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At least you can back up ebooks. I've lost paper books in an apartment flood (just the bottom shelf of 15 or so bookcases, though, not all of them; I lost one box of books in a cross-country move; and my mother lost books in a house fire as a child. (no, no insurance). I also have 20 or so boxes of books in storage that I need to go through, sort, and sell, give away, or trash. Time and money is spent maintaining those boxes. I no longer dream of having a large enough house to have my own library (as I did as a kid).
I haven't yet lost an ebook (though I have far fewer of them and only 8 years of reading them). My backups are automated (and my book vendors still alive: ereader and, now, Amazon, and allow redownload). And so far all the ebooks I have are still readable.
OTOH, I've also sold or given away several hundred books. DRM ebooks prevent that possibility.