At my parent’s house, there are few books at least 150 years old. I can still read them if I want.

Can the same be said about electronic books? Before you answer, I would suggest you search the BBC Domesday Book Project for an example of electronics being worse than the printed (or handwritten) material.

Paul, I agree with you, but back then there were lots of proprietary formats, that, in part, is why that project failed (IMO).
You could say the same for written texts, if a language dies then it's hard to read a book.

I think today we have much better standards for both software and hardware. Take a PDF from ten years ago and I would expect to still be able to read it, take a web page from 15 or 20 years ago and I would definitely expect to read it or at least be able to interpret it somehow (perhaps I may need to look into the source, and HTML happens to be fairly simple).

If we do go down a tech route for things like this, the key point is that if the standard moves on, it should be easy to update your media.

I say maybe.

My friend has got a Sony reader and it's very nice to use although there is clearly plenty of room for improvement. This isn't mature technology yet so I suspect there will be plenty of development coming along.

One thing I wouldn't have considered if it weren't for my friend was the benefit of an eReader for someone with neck/back problems. The Sony reader she has weighs similar to a fairly normal paperback so is easy to hold for long periods and it beats the pants off of a hardback or long paperback book in terms of minimising aggravation existing medical problems.
The ability to scale the text is also a boon for those with vision problems and I can see eReaders being very good for the elderly (assuming the controls are suitable for them to use) and other people who struggle with manipulating a normal book.

Using eReaders for documents subject to frequent change like product manuals is a brilliant idea. Just sync the most recent version for your product and away you go.

Having said that, I still thinks paper books are quite safe. There is something special about holding and reading a paper book.

No. I like to give my eyes a rest from the screen from time to time.

I had this conversation with someone recently. I suggested he backed up some unique old photos to disk and on-line. His response was "These photos are 100 years old. Will Flicker be here in 100 years?" - thus totally missing the point.

There's no need to eliminate the paper copy. It can be kept safe somewhere. The electronic version can be viewed and copied an unlimited number of times, without loss or damage. If Flicker disappears, it doesn't matter because you should have a backup elsewhere ready to load onto whatever website takes over.

For as long as the electronic age lasts, then I'd expect digital books (and images) to outlive paper ones.

They can be copied instantly at a vastly lower cost than printing, and with the ever increasing use of distributed memory techniques the actual medium used for storage and retrieval is becoming irrelevant. With a library stored "in the cloud", you could bomb half the planet and retain all the literature. With books, the ones produced in smaller numbers are easily lost to dust. Parchment keeps much better than paper, but even that is vulnerable to environmental damage.

The only real threat to digital media is DRM, especially if it's propitiatory and limited in certain ways.

Languages last for hundreds of years. Even then, there are people around that can read all the anciant languages. Electronic formats last for a couple of years. The hardware passes out of date, the hard drive formats move on, and 20 years down the line you realise nobody manufactures cassette tape drives anymore and no software exists anymore to read it even if you could...

Paper, on the other hand, is still going strong. Even some of the original Egyptian papyrus. You can't seriously expect me to believe that electronic formats will ever compete with the written/printed word for sheer durability.

Anyway, back to the point, nobody can remotely delete my paper books

See, now there are plenty of supposed natural phenomena which were they to occur, would pretty much put an end to all sorts of electronic media.
A big enough solar coronal mass ejection could do very bad things. A magnetic reversal may (or may not) also cause merry hell with all our electronic devices.
My books would be, I think, safe.

We've got a book here at home that's over 200 years old. It's an old family recipe book.
I have a Psion organiser that won't switch on anymore. Any data that was on it would have required constant nursing from one format to another if it was to survive to the present day.

But this is all speculative doom mongering, although I still don't see the need in my life for an e-book reader. If something like the alleged Apple Slate gets it right, then that's far more use than something so limited, and should go on to greater success I'd imagine.

The thing is, the documents written in the 70s and 80s can still be easily read by modern software - the filters are still in Word for many, for example. The problem is actually accessing the data, importing it is a non-issue,

Look at the industry standard formats of the time. It is only 20-30 years ago, but how many computers today can read a cassette tape or an 8" or 5.25" floppy drive? If you can find a working drive, how many of floppy drives have deteriorated, magnetically, beyond a point where they can be reliably read.

USB is about to be replaced by the "next big thing", MFM, RLL etc. drives are history, seen a motherboard which can read those lately? How many of the current motherboards still have P-ATA? Take that forward a century or two, how many USB ports or S-ATA ports are still going to be around? Will we still have the knowledge and tools to easily integrate current hardware into the computers of the future?

The storage mediums, all of the current ones degrade and degrade quickly.

I think possibly as a portable, always-to-hand textbook/reference manual. It would require full-colour diagrams to be available though, preferably in a scalable vector format, and I'm not sure whether this is possible with E-ink. Hmmmmm...

<eddit>Nb. The e-book would be in addition to a real copy of the book. Paper FTW!</eddit>

Edd

As it was EVER then I put maybe

However the eBooks would need to

Be Cheaper than a “real” Book

Be able to be lent to friends and Family

Allow me to make notes (Text Books mainly)

Allow me to print off pages either physically or copy pages to a “scrap book”. I currently do this with various books/ magazines for hobbies – classic example is cookery I have a box file of recipes from various sources

Be robust and cheap enough that I can “throw it around”

Have one universal format (the last thing I want is not to be able to read a book from publisher X because the use a format not supported by ebook Y

Until these are all satisfied then sorry I will stick to paper

Screens hurt my eyes if I stare at them too long so no I very much doubt it

Have you tried using an E-Ink screen, Caz? Unlike most screens they update once per "page turn" and then remain static. And, in book form, you can position them at a slightly more comfortable distance, and avoid bad glare etc. I still prefer real books, though.

No. I like my books. I've used audio books but can't see myself going for ebooks any time soon.

*sticks heals in *

+1

Me too I think it's only technical books I'd get a second copy of as a portable reference, if the cost delta to include it was minimal.