Especially when multiple books are assigned for a class, physical textbooks have one tremendous advantage: as distinct objects, they're great for multitasking a

Especially when multiple books are assigned for a class, physical textbooks have one tremendous advantage: as distinct objects, they're great for multitasking and reference. I can't count the number of times I was working on problem sets, and spread out in front of me on the floor or a big table: two or three different books open to relevant pages, class notes, scratch paper, and a laptop for Google. An unholy mess, but I needed all those resources! If they were all electronic, it would have looked neater to an observer, but I would have either needed six monitors or I'd have been in Alt-Tab hell. All my classmates had the same working style, though that may have been a peculiarity of my physics department. E-books are good for linear reading (ie fiction), and for keyword searching. They are not (yet) as good for browsing and non-search random access, or for being able to look at multiple resources simultaneously. And I had to do a lot of that in college.