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Comment by jotm | Hacker News Reader

I'm kinda sad that even though tablets are multipurpose and go for less than $200, people still manufacture paper notebooks and books. What happened to save the environment, reuse, save the trees?

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My (paper) note book (a cheap $0.50 mead spiral bound model) can be thrown in my bag without any concern over it being damaged, or remembering to charge it, and it will remain functional. It has no obvious value to thieves, and leaving it lay visible in the car does not appreciably increase my risk of the car being broken into. It is also lighter, and quicker to use than any tablet I've used.

And in these days of network printers that can also scan an email a PDF back to you, backups are easy.

Given the spat of hard disk failures I've experienced in the last few months, I actually trust the paper copy to remain useable longer. Also, the lower data density of a paper note book helps mitigate the risk as well - damage to a notebook simply doesn't affect the quantity of data that the loss of a hard disk, tablet, or flash drive can affect.

Absolutely, I have notebooks going back 30 years in this room, data on disks not so much!

I scan to share and to tag and as insurance for complete loss of the 'daily book' I carry round.

Of course, there are no adverse environmental effects from manufacturing tablets, circuit boards, etc.

In principle, they last longer than a paper notebook.

In practice...

Outside the Amazon rainforest, "save the trees" is stupid and meaningless. They haven't touched old growth forest to make paper in over a century.

Don't waste your time being sad about this. Paper products will exist approx. forever, long after either of us is dead. If you watch the video, the book is actually a work of art. It's not like people printing 10 copies of TPS reports that nobody will read, just to file in a filing cabinet.

First, electronics ironically last less...

Everything I have on paper I did not lost, even when it got damaged for whatever reason (like a flooding...)

But I already lost lots of electronic data (specially with some bad flukes, like dropping a backup HD on the ground, and then figuring the original broke down too for some reason)

And lots of electronics.

Also finally, using paper to write in the bus or metro here in Brazil does not make people point guns at your head, while using electronics does. (I am not kidding, I got robbed at gunpoint a couple times)

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