I frickin' love you Perdix. Yes ****.

She'd have it in 20 hours of work :D

True, but I have always found that tutoring is a great way to make extra cash. You can earn a great amount for a small amount of work. Editing term papers and thesises for a certain amount, is a goldmine. If anyone needs tips let me know.

Not necessarily with a new contract.

There's a huge difference between having the real book in your hand or a phone/tablet. There's a reason she wants that 150 years old book instead of some newer version for much less already, doubt she'd want it as an ebook ^^ (Yes I'd go for the ebook version, too, but I'm a tech person. And I still have a few hundred real books)

#29, truth be told, I actually like reading physical books, too. My preference is to split my reading about in half between electronic and paper. There are advantages to both and I'll use both while I still can. PS: I'd tell you how to find my downshirt photo on Instagram, but you really don't want to see it ;)

Reading en 'ebook' will never ever compare to reading a real book, it will be a sad day when real books are no longer printed.

#40, true, true. Plus, with the really old books, you can get high on the mold. It's true!

Reading books on electronic display will kill your eyes more quickly (unless you have e-ink). Another problem is that electronic book does not feel like something worth having - it is something immaterial/ephemeral. Old books like all old things have history. Just having one of those or holding it in your hands gives you completely different feeling. So for books like THOSE you need physical copy. Also, for art books, you also need physical copy. For modern crap, technical manuals, references, dictionaries it makes sense to use your e-readers. Material like this is not good enough to be given physical form and space on your bookshelf/in your library.

Physical copy is great, until they're destroyed by fire or flood or termites (each of which has really happened in my case). Insurance can't always help you to recover things.

69, physical books have better lifespan than modern electronics. Harddrives crash, motherboards get fried, and a small water damage can turn your cell into brick. If you count on some kind of external server for storage, then companies like that sometimes go out of business and they also can lose all their data in case of natural disaster. All modern storage technologies are new, and do not offer reliable storage compared to paper. Book can survive for decades easily. Electronic information is handy, but i'd expect life span of a one decade at most.

I love digital copies so I can discreetly read at work. I know, I know, I should be working, but sometimes I do slack a little bit...shame on me.

Computer hard drives actually last a lot longer than a decade or two if you are careful with it. In my opinion, you have to be a lot more careful with paper than digital files. However, paper books will always be superior in my mind.

80, yeah, and you can brick it with magnetic field, fry if there's electrical problem, kill it if you drop it, and so on. Book is pretty much invulnerable to all of these. Book can survive hundred of years *easily*. With HDD that's simply not gonna happen. Digital info literally decays very quickly. With digital info you have life expectancy of *2..5* years, maybe 10..30 years if you use something like magnetic tapes, but that's it. Without backup strategy and regular expenses, all your information will be completely gone in no time. It is pretty funny how modern society uses digital storage while forgetting how fragile it is. One EMP blast could literally destroy entire internet wiping out everything - ALL of the internet, ALL data, including google, facebook, all your precious photos, and there would be no way to restore it. And nobody cares.

There's something about holding a book with pages that seems to make reading more enjoyable and the experience even more special. Maybe it's just me but I could never read a book online or on my phone. It takes away the magic.

Each has its pluses and minuses, I suppose. There's nothing like reading while curled up on the couch, basking in the warm radioactive glow of a tablet. :-) The touch and feel of the slightly raised type of a good book is pretty keen, although the library frowns on you running your fingers over some of the older stuff.

87- please tell me you're kidding. If not, you've been watching too much sci-fi stuff. An EMP blast could completely destroy your personal computer, and indeed any electronics you had in a certain radius. Put it in the right spot, it might even destroy a small part of the Internet. But the whole thing? The Internet isn't in some storage cupboard somewhere, ready to be wiped out. Unless someone made an EMP generator so big it covered the entire Earth, the Internet won't be destroyed so easily. Books may be more durable than an E-Reader, but e-books can be copied in an instant if you have the right file. The digital copy of the can last much longer than a physical copy.

118, You're naive. High attitude nuclear explosion. And, yes it IS possible to take out the whole thing. A lot of companies have most of their servers in usa. Take out those - and data loss will be massive and unrecoverable. Also, please thing about much more realistic scenario - the Sun. A massive solar flare can fry all electronics. See November 18, 1882 solar flare information. Today, one event like this will cause massive damage, because today's electronics are much more sensitive.

If they were truly intellectually superior they'd buy her a much better phone as well as the books, for the same price.