I think the poster was referring to the tendency of SD cards, hard drives and CDs to corrupt the files stored on them over
really long periods of time. Not relevant to you (or me) in any way, I think.
You have a point, but I have a hard time sticking to one book sometimes, even if I like it. It happens more when I'm reading nonfiction then when I'm reading fiction, but sometimes I start to itch for something else. If I stick to the book usually it redeems itself, but if not I end up with a 'stack' of unread books. With an ereader you have them calling to you all the time. Yes, John F, if a book isn't holding your interest and not teaching you something, it needs to be forgotten. To keep only one book on my ereader would be destroying its biggest advantage, It would be like removing your browser to help you focus.
I guess the ereaders are delicate. The only time I know of anyone breaking one is when I got into a fight with a friend of mine in highschool, which ended with me throwing him into a bush. His ereader screen broke. However, pbooks fall apart from regular use. Unless you have a good binding, just reading them will break them. The tiniest drop of water will make a pbook swell, turn wavy and sometimes even make its pages stick together (sometimes this can be fixed with a knife and a vise, sometimes not). There are cases where a pbook will hold up better, but my bets will stay on the ebook.
Yes and no. I own an ereader and still feel the pbook wins in many cases.
Yes and no. A pbook can be handed from one friend to the next, from one generation to the next, can sit on your bookshelf for you to look at, and is not subject to the whims of a monster like Amazon. Are pbooks obsolescent? Yes. Will they ever be obsolete? I don't think so. At this point, I think they are two different tools, both good each for its own thing. You wouldn't want to be without a car, but there are times when what you need is a bicycle.
The answer to your question is that, like you said, an ereader can carry many books, while a pbook can carry only one. Another reason is that I read a lot of classics - three or four books and the ereader will pay for itself. The main reason I bought it, though, was to root it and get a distraction free word processor. The best case scenario would be to have both
I also have to say that when I wrote my first post about the superiority of the book, I hadn't had an ereader in two years. Now that I have one again, I am not so sure. I am not giving up my pbooks anytime soon, though.
