Hi Brittany,
For starters I would say I am a massive fan of eTextbooks for all the reasons you mentioned and some others:
-ease of portability
-all in one place
-Searchable
-Hyperlinked
It is so important to me to find the information I want quickly and easily so I am a sucker for etextbooks with their search and hyperlink function. My learning style means I mainly use textbooks for additional information to improve my understanding. I am not one of these people who sits down with a huge textbook and reads it time and time again!
A close friend of mine bought the gear required to scan in textbooks so now I read them in a PDF format on my iPad. I have to say the main reason I initially bought an iPad is so that I could read textbooks on it on the go. I love having my entire library available with me wherever I go. It means that I can always read up on a particular topic in a textbook immediately after seeing a case which I find really consolidates the information.
However I do think that there is still a place for paper textbooks. I think it is easier to read large sections of text from one of them rather than an electronic version. I don't really annotate textbooks particularly so I have to say that it doesn't really bother me.
One thing I was always interested in was how well the Kindle reproduces images and tables. Medical textbooks often contain vast numbers of these and I was always concerned that these would not carry across to the ereader well. As such I would recommended the iPad as the ultimate ereader as it is fantastic at displaying and storing textbooks but it also has a multitude of other features.
Another point which is only going to grow is the rise of interactive textbooks. Companies like Inkling are changing the goalposts in terms of what to expect from a textbook and how to improve learning. I do use these interactive resources particularly when I am studying that topic ie learning clinical anatomy.
