The ease of access to my book on my phone to read when I have 10 minutes spare is far better than access to print.

> I think tablets are a decent secondary substitute for print-form [...] where the activity is more browsing rather than linear.

Interesting that my impression is more or less the opposite: I can read on a tablet all right, but leafing through is annoying and switching back and forth between three or four places in a big (thousand-page) reference book is so annoying as to be nearly impossible. The first, because rendering PDF pages (understandably) takes time, and the second, because I’ve seen no bookmarks interface as seamless and convenient as leaving a loose sheet of paper or even just your finger in the necessary place—they’re all fiddly.

I'd be interested to know both of your ages; I'm assuming, mananaysiempre, that you're probably under 30, and that mellosouls, like myself, is over 40. With some exceptions it seems like there is a generation gap between those of us who prefer the written word on paper, and those who prefer it on a screen of some sort, with the latter group tending to be those who've essentially grown up with digital gadgets of all sorts.

You’re not wrong on the facts, but I don’t think they support your conclusion. I’m 30, but I’ve only had a broadband internet connection since I was 15 and a touchscreen smartphone since I was 18.

I’d say there are two reasons from my reading from screens a lot: as far as the last couple of years go, if you know of a way to ship two bookcases or so from Moscow, Russia, to somewhere in the sane(r) world without spending prohibitive amounts of money (or having to return there in person), I’d very much appreciate it; before that, it’s not like ex-Soviet libraries stock any English-language technical or scientific literature issued after 1990, and paying the extra 50% for a two- to three-month-long Amazon delivery on top of the already-insane prices was hardly an option for a teenager or a college student.

Perhaps the issues is with the software rather than the format. I use KOReader and it offers a number of tools for browsing through a book. Which is fantastic. Yet most of the software out there is incredibly linear (with the only exceptions being keyword search, table of contents, and maybe an index provided by the publisher).

For normal fiction, the Kindle is ideal for me. Much more comfortable to hold than even a small paperback, can increase the font size (getting old) and can illuminate the screen. Plus, I can carry a full library with me.

I haven't found anything better than paper for technical docs, but getting a PDF and printing the few pages I need is amazing.