I’ve seen several people preferring to read a paper book as against an eBook. While there are several advantages of eBooks like portability, hyper-linking, animations and ability to search through the text, the choice also likely depends and what you are reading. It would not appeal me to sit in front of the computer and read a novel or a story book. The comfort of holding the conventional book and lying down on the couch, flipping through the pages can never be equated to reading on the computer screen. However, e-reading is much the way of our daily lives (This blog entry included!!) and cleartype technology is out to help Windows users. Turn-ON Windows XP cleartype fonts and tune the settings to have a smoother rendering of the screen fonts. Check the cool 6 new fonts, fontblog and the video on what’s next with cleartype on Windows Vista. My new favorite is Candara.
Also worth checking out is the CoolReader download for the FictionBook format eBooks.