Interestingly enough, the newest version of Sony's reader now includes a touch screen. I didn't look into it enough to discover whether or not a stylus could be used with it for annotating purposes. It's certainly a step in the right direction, though, if a small one.

Interestingly enough, the newest version of Sony's reader now includes a touch screen. I didn't look into it enough to discover whether or not a stylus could be used with it for annotating purposes. It's certainly a step in the right direction, though, if a small one.

This means 3 things need to happen before e-books can overtake actual books.
1) low power color screens need to be mass produced. The first of these can be found in OLED screens now coming out in devices like the Microsoft Zune HD. With a power usage 40-50% less than that of a regular LED screens this is a small beginning (although still no-where near the battery life of e-ink).
2) Touch screens and stylus's need to become mandatory on all “e-textbooks”
3) the screens need to become double the size, which unfortunately means a bigger battery and a higher cost

So in the end the question truly is: If so many things need to take place for an e-book to be a feasible replacement then why not just make a software app for our laptops and save the weight and cost of buying and carrying one more item around…

In my opinion it's just impractical and will never really take grasp like its being marketed to.

Imagine needing to search for a topic in the index of a printed book versus using the search function of an e-book reader. Sure it will be a little difficult at first when you have to learn how to use a new technology but I think this is very similar to the typewriter being replaced by PCs with word processing programs.

Also, I think it is just a matter of time until someone figures out how to copy e-books from one reader to another. If we were talking about music or movies or games instead of books someone would have figured it out already.