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Unfortunately, conversion to e-books is probably not a real possibility for me. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of books in my garage, plus many bookshelves at home. I'm overrun with them. Even if DRM issues get worked out, I realize I probably won't be able to replace them with e-books in my lifetime (too much to scan and not popular titles in general, so unlikely they will be available in e-book form). Actually, very few people have bookshelves only filled with popular books available in e-book form, so it's probably a common situation.
To go all digital, the technology would also need to improve also, because I only find ebooks useful for quick reference (like encyclopedias) or front-to-back reading (like works so well on the Sony Reader). For many other books I want to jump around in quickly. Even sometimes with novels (e.g. if I revisit them).
Are e-books really preferable? Yes! I just turned down an overflowing pickup truckload of books from a friend. I really wanted them. The only thing that made me turn them down was storage issues. If they were e-books, I would have joyfully accepted them. Of course, if they were e-books without storage issues, he also would have wanted to keep them!
In this day and age with e-books (and even with paper books), we have personal libararies that can probably outshine the libraries of royalty in the past centuries. So much is readily available. I think that's one of the reasons pbook storage is such a big issue. We want and even expect to be able to collect a full library. With Project Gutenberg and others, it's no big deal for an individual to do that.
As far as books I've read, I do like to have them stay available. For paper I want to be able to give good ones away. For e-books, I just want to be able to go back and remember it, even if it's just glancing and skimming it for nostalgic reasons.
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