Last year, as part of my "senior project" at Stanford, I worked with Zinio to gather feedback about digital textbooks from students. There were some students who didn't like the idea of reading on the screen. However, a majority really liked the digital textbooks offered by Zinio. Since the project was completed in the spring, Zinio has dramatically improved their reader.

Hacker, have you checked out their new version? It is nothing at all like a giant pdf. Multimedia features are embedded in the pages, navigation is extremely easy, and you can digitally annotate, take notes, and highlight. Plus, you can search the text for words and phrases, a feature students found extremely useful.

The Zinio textbooks are half the price of the regular printed versions, and they never expire.

Digital textbooks are exact replicas of the printed texts. Neither the publishers nor Zinio would have any incentive to change the texts... the whole selling point is that they are exact replicas of the printed versions.

There are some important issues still to be worked out. First, you are right that some students really don't like the restriction of being able to access the textbook on only one computer. I don't know what Zinio is going to do about this problem, but I know they are working with the publishers to consider various solutions.

There are always going to be people who prefer printed textbooks. However, for those who like the digital features, like paying half as much, like not having to lug around heavy books all the time, care about saving trees and eliminating waste, and don't mind reading on screens, digital textbooks are a nice alternative to printed texts.