I read books.

Currently, I read them on good old fashioned paper, but I am eager to try the Kindle.

Paul

I mainly read as a real book, but I have several e-books I have read on my tablet PC.

Real books, maybe will rethink when there's a color Kindle with fold-out screen.

Thought my HP 2710p would do the trick, but no scrolling hard key, and bad pen calibration on the edges of the screen (where the scrollbar is), a known defect. Some experienced users in Gottabemobile's HP forum have argued that this lack of a hard scroll solution is overblown and they never missed it. But I'm still finding it to be the major defect in this Tablet PC, for exactly this use as an e-reader.

I read eBooks since 2000. I almost just read digital - eBooks, ePapers, etc…

First in my Palm handheld, then after 2002 I got a Pocketpc and begun to read in those… as the years have passed I changed Pocketpc’s (now phone edition ones) and still read in them - ex. I have in my HTC 3600 all the 4 leader readers, Mobipocket, eReader, Microsoft Reader and Acrobat.
The idea is simple, one reads when one has the “content” with him, I have my phone with me all the time!

Then in 2003 I bought my first Tabletpc, one of the main reasons was exactly to be able to read in it. It proved outstanding for that, today I do all my main PDF reading - manuals, scientific papers, magazines, etc… - in my Tabletpc’s.

But… then there was eInk coming and since February I’m the proud owner of a Cybook Gen3 eBook reader…. And that one is really amazing!
Literature now is 95% in the Cybook. And it’s all they say it is and even more.
For people who would be interested in dedicated eBook readers, the place to go is the “MobileRead Forums” at (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/index.php).

Taking notes, for sure in the technical eBooks, and that I do in my Tabletc’s.
The documents are in PDF format and for that I use the invaluable PDFAnnotator software.

I live between the digital and paper world. Currently I digitize all my books to read and use them on my tablet.
The lack of a scroll wheel? Just use the fingerprint reader for this.

Audiobooks are my favorite. They make the commute (only 15 minutes) and any long drive go much faster. If I read, I use the old paper style.

I have almost 200 books on my bookshelf at Ereader.com (first one purchased May of 2001). I have another 50 at Webscriptions.net (Baen books).
I've read them on multiple Palms, multiple WinMo devices, my desktop and two different Tablet PCs (tc1100 and Sahara 440i).

At present I use the Sahara 440i and my little HTC 3125 WinMo 5.0 smartphone.

I also have a Archos 605 - if anyone has a hack to allow ereader to run, I would love to add that also (the ereader support says there is no version for it)

I still grab paperbacks when an author I like doesn't publish to the digital world, but prefer digital. It is easier to carry 6 books on my phone and tablet pc when I travel than physical books.

I listen to the majority of my pleasure reading on my iphone, having purchased them from audible.com.

I would love to be fully eReading, but that just does not seem quite possible yet. Most of my reading are text books and they aren't available for the most part in electronic format. For next semester I am considering having Kinko's shop them up for me and then I will scan them on a scanner with an ADF. Then I will use that for making notes in OneNote on my TPC. The other reason I don't use an eReader is that most of my reading for fun are magazines. The kind I like are mostly scuba diving and they have way too many colorful pictures to be seen on the likes of a Kindle.

Funny this topic came up.. I've been lusting after a sony reader again. Currently Im between paper and Ebooks. Being in the Army taking books just adds to the weight I have to carry. Being a pilot there are all sorts of books, manuals, and other random papers that I read ofter if not daily. With PDF Annotor and a tablet (TC4400) I have completely made the shift to digital in the professional side. By the way, if you like to mark up documents PDF Annotator 2 at $49 dollars (only in beta but to be released soon)is the way to go. Very natual just like using paper and pen or highlighter. The fullscreen with slide out menus is awesome. Now my whole professional library weighs as much as a tabet PC and not 100+ lbs.

On a personal note I still have paper for my fun reading. Being in Korea I left all my books at home to save weight and have kinda switched to digital. Fun books I read on a retasked TC1000. The old baby lives on. Still not as light and small as a paperback. But Im saving the 300 on the sony. Still I would love to hear from anyone who has the sony reader Im not looking for it to Read PDFs. I have lots of stuff in .LIT and would love a good reason to pull the trigger on the Sony Reader 505. It would be nice to have something small and with a good screen. (Remember the sparkle on the TC1000 glass.) The sony readers Epaper Screen is calling with its sweet metal casing.

I have to admit something...I perfer paper books over ebooks. Sad I know. Ecologically not as friendly...I know. But there is just something about paper books that I love. Maybe it's the old fashioned Minda coming out. I'm also building my own little library. It's comprised of textbooks, non-fiction books, and loads of best sellers, obscure novels, and bargain bin finds. I'm such the little bibliophile.

Since early high school I have been a voracious reader.
That has not changed and primarily I am handling the paper type of books. However, with that being said, I am a new owner of a tablet (HP tx2000 series) and would love to utilize it more for reading.
The biggest sticking point is finding ebook equivalents to the paper versions of books that I would like to read. If publishers would in parallel, push out a paper and ebook form of any book they publish (across the board - all publishers would be great), I would not hold paper again.
Very convenient to hold a library in your hands. In short, I am waiting for a 'digital revolution' to do to paper media what it did to physical music collections.
And Minda - I actually agree with you. Something satisfying to me as well holding a book. I even like how they, and book stores smell. Still, having a mass of books in one device is a great draw to me as well.

I still buy the paper version but scan it in to read on my OQO. The other night as I was going to bed I wanted to start reading a book I've just bought. After five minutes I had to put it down because it felt so unnatural holding this heavy, unwieldy dead tree in my hand!

I've been reading on my PDA for over ten years, and that's not going to change soon. That's because my PDA is small and portable, I can stick it in a pocket, and I can pull it out and read while waiting in a queue, while on a plane, etc, just by having my PDA with me (don't need to carry books around). I do still read printed books and love them, and have a wall full of bookshelves that are very crowded. As other people have mentioned, many books just aren't available as ebooks. Also, there are hostile environments where I won't take my PDA - the beach, for example! Audiobooks I save for when I'm driving any longer distance.

I have read books on laptops or on the UMPC but only when I happen to have those devices with me - I don't carry them around for that purpose. To be honest, true ebook readers like the Kindle seem to me to be massive things to carry around. I love that you can download new books and store a lot of books, but my key requirement of being able to put it in my pocket or my handbag (and still be able to fit in all my other stuff!) means it'll be my Palm (or whatever I upgrade to) for quite a while yet.

I really do love the art and craft of the book, its history, design, its many shapes and sizes--and its preservation, leaching acid out of the paper, re-inking manuscripts (an art preserved in Torah scrolls on parchment as they fade), preserving covers and rebinding. Some of these are things of beauty. Our cultural history will be preserved digitally in infinite ways, but also in libraries, private collections, and created anew in artistic ways.

Just as the phone didn't eliminate snail mail, nor has email (although both consigned it to a smaller corner of communication), neither will the digital universe eliminate the book. There are still small presses with movable type being used to print art books and poetry, and the skills of the book designers are still in demand at the big commercial houses.

Two interesting recent articles:

Friday, Princeton Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about loving his Kindle, and how he sees the economics of intellectual property.

And in the June 12th edition of the New York Review of Books, professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard Robert Darnton writes about the "The Library in the New Age," pointing out that almost every year for the last decade, the number of (physical) books published in America has grown (over 200,000 in 2006), that the five great libraries that are permitting Google to digitize their collections have 60% unique holdings, and he's persuasive on the limitations of Google and the other efforts to digitize entire libraries.

Both articles available online.

As someone who has gotten to handle great works in first editions, seventeenth and eighteenth century maps of the U.S., and medieval illuminated manuscripts, I can vouch for the uniqueness of handling a well-wrought book on paper

I can also tell you that there's no convenient way for me to order general, first-year college textbooks in electronic form, either for my college-age kid, nor for my own students, unless I spend a huge amount of time shopping item by item with the publishers comparing the copyright holdings of one to a dozen others, and that the process saves my students not one dime, and loses them the opportunity to resell their used books.

Here are the pleasure and frustration I have:

I loved keeping a dozen or more books at a time on my Palm, and from the Gutenberg Project I once downloaded five hundred books in the public domain onto my first tablet PC, an Acer C112. Golly! Illustrations and all! They are easy to SEARCH for and within, as are my OneNote notebooks, and Word documents.

BUT they are hard to BROWSE compared to looking at shelves (mine, library, or bookstore), or leafing through paper books (BEFORE you buy), my paper journals, and notebooks (which I'm just as likely to misplace).

And I can't reach and hand an audio book or purchased ebook to a student, as I did a few times with paper books last week.

I've also taken public domain books used TextAloud to create MP3s for my commute when there wasn't an Audible available.

I read both types: some printed books are best for reference (as when I'm working on a network or computer), others are best for portability. I LOVE when a physical book contains an electronic ("soft") copy...that's an added incentive to purchase it...

For eBooks, I use: PDAs, a tablet PC, laptops...and store them on portable USB drives and SD cards. I wish someone would create an 8 x 10 inch tablet pad that include the functions of a PDA, Kindle, and the Sony Portable Reader.

I might mark-up a printed book; in the case of eBooks, I might create a note document and place it in the same folder as the eBook.

I spend between 800 and 1000 hours a year behind the wheel so audio book are my primary way to "read" non-technical publications.

Coincidental to this thread, and my tenth year with Audible, I happened across my first Audible player yesterday. A new battery was all that it took to get the venerable old RIO 500 to play the Audible books that were still waiting in the flash memory.

For technical material (browser & PDF) I use an M1400va slate and love it. I use it so much that my wife calls it "the mistress".

I was given a Kindle but I seldom use it. At this point technical material is relatively unavailable (minimalist graphics and lack of color will be a problem even when it is), audio is still preferable for non-technical, and Sprint has no coverage where I live and work.

I use audio, paper and electronic book forms for different purposes:

Audiobooks are great not only for driving, but for getting me through otherwise tedious jobs, like folding laundry and house cleaning. :-)

Paper books are necessary for my teaching. Bluespapa said it better than I ever could. Paper is also light, daylight readable, and never needs to be plugged in. It's great for travel when I'm a passenger.

I use electronic format mostly for things that are venerable, and therefore free (Project Gutenburg) or for articles that I want to mark up in OneNote. Electronic text has the advantage of being searchable, and that's great for my research and teaching. I love being able to annotate in searchable ink. I really do love having a library at my fingertips, but it will never replace the one I have covering one wall of my basement and just about every shelf in the house.

I use my 12" tablet pc for reading, which I really like for PDF files, where smaller pages are a nuisance. I would never buy a device specifically for reading. Couldn't justify the expense to myself, when my multipurpose tool can handle the job. Sorry, Amazon, you'll never sell me a Kindle.

I read almost exclusively on my Dell Axim 30 PDA. I purchase mostly through ereader.com and use their (used to be Palmreader) software. The default font and screen size pretty much approximates a NY times column (except this one is infinitely long). A particular advantage of the Axim 30 is that it has a jog wheel which makes it easy and natural to "turn" pages. Another important feature is that it is backlit so I can read in bed without disturbing my wife. This is one of the serious defects of the Kindle. A second defect of the Kindle is the size. As someone else noted I keep the PDA in my pocket with dozens of books ready to go. (I have a 2Gbyte SD chip in it. This also facilitates downloading, as I can just insert it in the slot of my Lenovo x61T. I read almost a book a week - History, Fiction, Biography, whatever
--Reuben

HTC Advantage. Superb as an ebook reader, portrait or sitting on a table in mini laptop mode.

My P1610 in slate mode is great for PDF magazines.

paper for the most part - I rarely get ebooks, the last ones I can recall reading were the Dan Brown ones (Da Vinci Code, etc) but they were much better in paper form.

That said, if someone were to send a Kindle my way, I would definitely give it a try - I just find it hard to justify $350 (or whatever they cost now) when I could use that for other stuff (new games, new headset, upgrades, yada yada yada)

eBooks and more eBooks.

Usually p-books, but when I do not have an access to it, I use my good old Tungsten E as an e-book reader.

Still using my trusted old HP x4700 PocketPC.

ePaper like the Amazon Kindle I do not see how I could use because it requires to have an light on when I am reading in bed, the PocketPC I just turn off (or it will turn it self off after one minute)

I read a lot of e-books, all via the Mobipocket Reader for my Blackberry 8300.

Since I always have my Blackberry with me, I can read whenever time allows. Great when stuck in airports etc.