Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
The nuance is that, in a cloud storage, you can lose your data because of the decision of someone else but you. (Case in point: CrashPlan is quitting its consumer service. You'll have to find another off-site cloud backup provider, or you'll lose your backups after the subscription ends.)
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Ugh! Don't even get me started on CrashPlan. Even if you migrate to a new backup provider, that only gives you backups going forward. Once CrashPlan shuts down the home plans next year, your history will forever be gone even if it is stored on your own drives! The least they could do is allow you to access your old backups on local drives, local computers, or friends' computers even if they didn't allow you to make any new ones or access their servers. Sigh.
I saw upthread that you made some estimates about lifetime reading and I think you are way off. I am only a moderate reader by MobileRead standards, and I have around 1500 "books" in my to-read pile, and 11,000 (5GB or so) in my read pile.
I think in my particular case, the numbers might be skewed by older material (either short stories from the pulps, or else novels from the time when 150 pages made a decent paperback) but regardless, I find that if I keep more than 100-200 books on my reader it's hard to browse for something to read next. Page flipping through the library takes so long that I run out of time before I've even chosen the book haha. I can't imagine the pain of keeping my entire library on device.
And as far as keeping a local copy of everything, I completely agree with you. Even if the book store or publisher doesn't go out of business, sometimes the rights will change and you will no longer be allowed to download something you bought (this has happened to me from Baen and Sony that I remember more recently).