Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> writes:

> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for at
> any time, for no defined reason?

Get an ereader that is not a Kindle, and learn how to strip DRM if
you're brave enough. 

> Still, it's not without advantages. (Size and weight being the obvious
> ones, but also the ability to enlarge the text to the point that even my
> grandparents can read it.) They're just not advances that are especially
> important to me.

One quite unintended benefit for me was the ability to read my news
through it. I use Calibre - a cross platform software for managing
ebooks. One benefit is that it has a database of news sites (and you can
add your own). You can have it once a day download all the news and save
it in a nice format (like epub, which the Kindle is arrogant enough not
to support - but you can try the mobi format).

That transformed my ereader from something I had hoped to use a few
times a year to something I use daily. After spending all my time in
front of a computer at work, it was becoming a (literal) pain to sit in
front of it at home to read the news. And what's more, it's simply more
fun reading on the ereader. Much more like reading a real newspaper than
it is on the computer. All the offensive CSS styling and other
intrusions gone.

Mind you, it *really* helps if your ereader has a touch sensitive
display (or some other mechanism that lets you easily click a link on a
given screen). 

Also, I just got sick of having so many physical books. A pain each time
I move. I was refusing to buy physical books for a while, but that's not
a problem for me. What's more, I discovered sites like BookMooch and
PaperbackSwap, so now I can get rid of extraneous books, and
occasionally get one for cheap.

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