> 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 much too 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.
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 much too fiddly.