You have to try it. It is such a joy. The pages turn like butter and never tear out. You can lift the entire binder by a single page. The paper size feels much more human-scale. I exclusively use J-Binders for my notes.

I'd love to try one of those. Three-ring binders are a chore because the holes are so easy to tear with daily use. Sure, they sell stickers that you put over the teared holes to repair them, but why not redesign the binders in the first place?

Exactly. The fact that “reinforcements” exist proves that the manufacturers know that the product design is bogus.

I think rings are kept to a minimum as evenly punching twenty holes in twenty sheets of paper at once would be difficult.

In The Netherlands, in schools 23-ring-binders are quite heavily used. In office environments it is mostly 2- or 4. The nice thing is that they are compatible: if you have 23-ring-paper or 4-ring it will fit in 2 or 4 ring binders. This does not work the other way around for obvious reasons.