I like books too, but where books fall short is that they are generally topic-specific. With books, you need to know ahead of time which subjects you will be wanting to learn or reference, and I do have a ton of reference material. The tricky part is having access to knowledge you do not yet know you need. My 1989 Britannica set kicks butt, but try getting a current and complete set for less than $3,000. I too prefer books,but when I can put a live operating system on a thumb drive and boot up any computer (even if it has no hard drive) and have access to dump trucks worth of books, I feel ok leaning partially on the idea that junk computers will always be available to boot a live OS on. If the world becomes so screwed that there are no computers, the information you need access to in order to thrive will be primitive at best ~ you won't be learning to anodize aluminum or calculate 3-phase power factors or anything one might find in digital dump trucks full of books. My reasoning is to have useful data backed up in order to use/share it when the time comes, and although I highly doubt we will ever loose internet, what's easily available on it might soon change so why not.
