Ew, ouch, sorry man.

Chris

I vote hardcopy& PDF. I love books, but it is useful to have the PDF because when I'm working on the computer and the book is in the other room I don't have to interrupt my thought train. Also, at the gaming table, or between sessions, one person can reference the book while the other references the ebook. Still, convenience aside, I would prefer to have the physical book everything. Heck, without convenience aside I would still prefer the hardcopy. I just get the PDF when it is feasible or required [out of print].

Tangentially, what is a splatbook?

I vote for hardcopy, easier to use I find. I also really object to being asked to pay for the pdf separately, so I don't.

Both.

English PDF and german hardcopy.

I voted hardcopy myself, I love the weight and feel of a nice book. I happen to have some PDF copies but I use them for reference at work where its difficult to have a book out and work at the same time.

Also, I thought splatbooks were those paperback books that contained expanded rules or settings information. If I had to guess I imagine the name came from the nice splat sound they make when you drop them on a table.

Thank you both for the edification.

I seem to be the minority here finding it easier to reference and run rules on my PC. I have acrobat reader open, running Cannon Companion, the SR3 BBB, Man and Machine, Magic in the Shadows, The Ultimate Shadowrun Equipment List, The SR Companion, The GM Screen at once. I can easily switch pdf's with the Window tab. With OEF copies, I can just CTRL + F any words I like, such as "Damage and Healing", and if not, I just click on the contents and CTRL + N and then tap in the page number.

I also have several word docs with NPC files, photoshop layered maps, google sketchup 3D diagrams (that I prepared earlier) a calculator and mood music running.

I find that constantly rifling through hardcopies results in spine wear and tear (and at the exorbitant prices, it scars the soul to see). It's nice for reading in bed, but I started using PDF's and am not going back on a pure gaming point of view.

The downside of course is the constant temptation to go wildly illegal.

I like both Paper and PDF.

PDF:
Quick to find something I need (you can't run a search on paper... yet)

Paper:
Makes a good common sense indicator (you can't smack someone over the back of the head with a PDF)

I think that it is vital for SR to continue to be published in both Paper and PDF format. They should look into PDF bundle packages though (the main source book + the basic equipment books, together as a bundle for a reduced price).

I like having both. For a straight read through though I prefer dead trees. Especially with gaming books where the text is arranged in columns it's annoying to constantly be scrolling up and down to read something. To look stuff up fast or for rules referances while creating a character I love PDF's.

I haven't got myself a laptop yet, and my SR4 pdf is a little hard to read on my Tungsten E2 (and don't think I haven't tried!), so I had to vote for dead tree. Besides, it's a little awkward to take a computer with you when you go read on the can.

But, if I had a laptop, and a group to play with, pdf's would seriously rock, and I would have had to vote for both. After I've read through the books enough I can usually turn to or near enough to the page needed for whatever rule at will with the paper book, so the search function probably wouldn't do me much good.

You guys should check out the new Amazon Kindle. It allows you to view PDFs in a semi-book format. If my finances allow for it, I'm picking one up.

@apollo: if you want to read your pdf on your Tungsten you could be interested by SR4Light. You can find it in the Community Project. You can use it to convert your pdf into small html files (one file per page) with a simple and efficient navigation system while keeping the layout of each page.

I don't know how it'll perform on a Tungsten, but on my Zodiac it's perfect! It is much faster than the PDF viewer, and one column fits in the screen (in landscape mode). I read my copy of Augmentation in the bus thanks to this, and except for some bugs at the beginning of each chapter, I didn't have any trouble.

And I can use it to look up references at work!

Thanks for the info, Blade. Unfortunately, the Tungsten can't read HTML, but I appreciate the thought. I can read the PDF on my Palm, but not with the Adobe Reader for Palm program. Documents to Go version 8.0 or later has PDF support and does much better.

TBRMInsanity, if I could afford $400 for a Kindle, I think I would buy me a cheap laptop that can pretty much do everything my desktop does.

You guys got me curious, so I checked it out:

apollo124 : Don't you have a web browser on your Tungsten? My Zodiac runs PalmOS too and it does have a web browser and I think there are some free web browser available...
All you need is a browser that accepts to open html files stored on the device.

I think it did have some kind of browser, but since I don't have a wireless connection, I deleted it.

We now return you to your hijacked thread, already in progress.

Hard copy is the only way to go.

But, my hard copy is starting to come free from the spine. I've tried using super glue to keep it together, but it's only a matter of time.

Luddites, all of you. Your talk of books as living things to be cherished frightens and confuses me, and I own hundreds of the damned things. You know what all those books have in common? They hurt my back.

Downloaded, carefully bookmarked and backed up pdfs ftw. Crossreferencing is pretty easy if you know adobe well enough and even if you don't it's pretty easy to just copy pertinent bits to wordpad and crossreference that way.

I have to vote PDF all the way. Especially with Skim to view/annotate/etc. It makes it easy to lookup house-rules we're using along with the RAW.

And since I always have my laptop with me anyway, it's nice to not need to carry anything else around.

I'm a fan of having both. In fact, ever since the D&D Player's Handbook shipped with a CD eight years ago (sure it only had a lame character generator on it), I've felt that every gaming book should come with a PDF copy. I've never been satisfied with the idea of paying of the same material again just to have it digitally.

Book because you can hit people with them . . PDF because it's convinient to be able to do a search for one word you remember being in the text you're looking for *g*