[LDBoblo]

I'd actually prefer if paper producers would stop using their own benign, sustainable forests of bamboo-like trees designed for rapid renewal and would start cutting down some real growth again to improve some of the paper quality. Displace all those silly slash/burners in Africa and South America who are just putting all that good wood to waste. Of course, it'd be nice to make paper out of some other materials too, since some varieties are quite superior to wood-based in terms of durability.

As far as ebooks...the devices suck. They are not good enough for anything outside of a very narrow window of usage. The technology needs to fundamentally improve before feasibility for mass adoption comes into play. There is no need, except when desperate, to adapt to the inferior nature of these devices unless their only 2 advantages are absolutely essential (space conservation, keyword search). I will take a widescreen high-resolution notebook with PDFs long long before I will even consider using any of the e-ink garbage for anything remotely resembling scholarly research. Having to find a power outlet and deal with a backlit LCD (Heaven forbid! A superior screen technology for small text!) are worthwhile for the incredibly massive step up in usability.

Adaptation is necessary, but adaptation to superior methodology and superior technology. The current crop of E-ink readers qualifies as neither. Most of us here are already early adopters in some way; that does not mean we should be in any way contented to reduce our standards and shrug it off with "well we have to adapt!" That's nothing more than a cop-out.

I will use just about anything OTHER than an ebook reader for research. I've had to do research working from bamboo slat scrolls, and I find those to be a superior technology to ebook readers at the moment. In another few generations of device, some of the technological kinks should be ironed out (hopefully not "adapted to" by apologists)...but I'm not going to waste my money on it now.