When computers were first proliferating in the mid 1980s, the phrase ‘paperless office’ began to be heard. A quarter century later and there’s still been no great progress towards making paper a thing of the past. The latest attempt is the e-reader, and from the media propagandising, you would think that the printing presses had already admitted defeat.

Well, e-readers may have evolved, from the Sony Data Discman, a notable 1991 flop, through to the latest Sonys, the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook, but the technology is still crude and the experience of reading on an e-reader is simply not as appealing as opening a book.

The €200 Kindle is the most popular of the current bunch in terms of ergonomics and the fact that you can download books direct from Amazon. The €230–€285 Sony machines are unexceptional, while the best all-rounder is the €515 IREX iLiad Book Edition, which allows you to make notes in your own handwriting. However, the iLiad has only 10 hours’ battery life, and is tricky to get used to.

The new breed of e-readers – dozens of them released in the past year – are pretty similar, with their ink-on-paper-like screens which have a low power consumption and, counter-intuitively, work better in daylight, even bright sunlight, than in a darker environment. But they are still sluggish and unlovable. Books look boring and monochrome on them, and that’s not the best way to encourage a new generation to read.

Indeed, as it stands, you might believe that if someone were to introduce the printed book today we would be gleefully throwing away our 2010 e-readers and enthusing about how the new devices don’t need batteries, cost only a nominal sum and are still usable even if you drop them in the bath.

Of course, the idea of portable gadgets that can contain thousands of books accessible in a usable manner is too good to let go of.

In the US, they’re far more popular, even with older people than in Europe and Asia, possibly because so many people there live far from a bookstore.

In five to 10 years the e-reader will probably have become ubiquitous, even without a lift from the iPad, Apple’s latest multipurpose offering. But electronic methods of presenting books need to get much better before books – as objects, not, hopefully, in any other sense – are history.

They must become thin and flexible; the rise of OLED screens should make this happen in the relatively near future. They must, additionally, become bright and colourful, cheap, beach and waterproof and be able to download full-fat, sexy-looking books, magazines and newspapers wirelessly wherever you are, at a cost which reflects the benefits of no longer having to print and distribute heavy paper goods.

Then, for sure, we might have our paperless world. Just don’t bet on it being entirely paperless, though.

E-READERS

IREX iLiad Book Edition €515 irextechnologies.com  

APPLE iPad from €360 apple.com

BARNES & NOBLE Nook €180 bn.com