Wait, so people here are arguing that we should waste our hard earned money on expensive, unproven technology that will be obsolete in a year or two, and doing so while the actual product we buy is inferior to what is available to us, all in the name of feeling good about saving the environment?
Seriously, get back to reality here. I'm all for saving the environment and trying to have a minimal impact on it, but this is a bit ridiculous. If everyone willingly spent there money on being such noble early adopters, you do realize that there wouldn't be any market forces pushing the technology to improve? It is great that ereaders are becoming popular and also great that companies are coming up with products like the DX to try and replace regular textbooks. However, mass conversion to such a product will only happen when:
a) The price point is right and comparable to what we currently have.
b) When the new product is actually more useful than what it is replacing
Like it or not, these are the 2 key factors which will decide when a paradigm shift occurs in how people treat books. The lack of massive adoption now, will only help because it will spur further innovation as companies like Sony and Amazon try as hard as they can to improve eReader technology and enlarge their customer base.
That is one aspect of it. Then there is this whole argument that somehow eReaders are magically better for the environment. What proof do we have? Here are some points to consider:
1) Lithium Ion batteries while not deemed hazardous still pose a problem as most of them don't end up getting recycled (especially ones in products that are not user replaceable)
2) Other rare earth metals that go into PCB manufacturing are not renewable materials. Sooner or later there is going to be a big problem as these get rarer and more expensive. Already, China has a huge monopoly on a whole bunch of rare earth metals and are tightening exports of these materials:
Reference Link
3) Ereaders aren't biodegradable. As millions and billions start buying them in the future, dropping them, breaking them and they start piling up in landfills and waste dumps, there isn't any environmentally friendly and nice way to do away with them. Books on the other hand...
4) All those servers hosting Ebooks, backing up ebooks, running 24x7 consume tons of power all the time. Maybe less than printing presses, but I don't know that for a fact...and I certainly don't know how well it would scale as more and more people adopt this technology
5) If we want to take it to extremes: Once I buy a book, it is on my book shelf and it doesn't consume any power. My ebook reader? Uses electricity all the time, has to be recharged, and then when I have to sync books, I have to use a computer that guzzles more power. Does that make you/me a terrible person now?
Seriously, some of you folk need to get of your moral high horse. Sure eBooks and eReaders are great, but to somehow suggest that they are magical environmental solutions and to scorn people refusing to adopt them from an environmental perspective is downright silly.