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To look at all the hype you'd think that the traditional book or magazine is dead.Ìý E-reading is where it's going, looking at stuff online either live or downloaded, and those cosy evenings by the fireside with a book that we all think we can remember are history.

This is of course all rot, e-books will no more replace books than talking books did. TV didn't replace radio, theatre didn't die when radio was invented – I could go on.

You might want an e-reader for all sorts of reasons. A book (or several) you don't think you're going to read more than once. A business book, a manual – books to which you're not going to form any real attachment, so it doesn't matter that they're stored electronically. Or so I thought until I actually read a couple.

Setting up is really easy. Charge your choice of reader and either download some books to your computer and synchronise, or if your reader has WiFi or 3G then download them straight to the reader from a book site such as Amazon.

If you want to buy an e-reader then there are a few things to bear in mind. First, do you want back-lighting? Having a book that lights up in the dark so you can read it without putting the light on and disturbing your partner (hint: this doesn't work as the light from the e-book reader is just as glary as the light from your reading lamp) sounds appealing but some of the manufacturers think you'll suffer from eye strain. I used such a reader (the Apple iPad as it happens) to read two average-length books and didn't suffer unduly.

The iPad, along with the Samsung Galaxy and other tablet devices, is of course much more than an e-book, it's a cut-down computer. These devices costs a load more than an e-reader, which will typically have a few games, the reader and possibly it'll allow you to put some music onto it.

Generally these don't have the back lighting but they use something called e-ink; this is a bit like an LCD display and generally it's supposed to be less taxing on the eyes than a backlit screen although when I read Philip Norman's chunky tome on the life of John Lennon on one it didn't feel markedly different from the iPad experience. Amazon, Sony and Kobo supply comparative products.

Whizzy bits

There are bells, there are whistles - Apple's own eBook reader, iBooks, is built into both iPhones and iPads and makes a swishing noise whilst animating the pages as you turn them. Amazon's Kindle is available as a piece of hardware but you can also get it as software for some phones and tablet computers, so you can still buy the books. The hardware version doesn't have a backlight, there's no swishing sound or animating pages but once I was into the books I really didn't notice.

This is the thing about reading from an e-book reader; once you're into the content you don't think about it being a tatty paperback or a piece of state of the art electronics, you're just reading a good book.

Good books

It's all about reading something good in the end. Before researching this article I'd actually read "Claudius the God" on an e-book and can't honestly remember which one it was; I just remember the book, which is as it should be.

Luckily there are a lot of free books out there for download. Many out of copyright classics are available without charge; in fact at Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) you can find 33,000 free reads either for your computer or an e-reader if you want.

Of course there are limitations. You can't scrawl notes on an eBook, they don't all fit neatly into your pocket, although several models are lightweight for holiday they are not good on the beach if you get sand in the works.

As an alternative to standard books if you have storage space problems, as a means of getting books to which you're not going to be massively attached, though, they might just be the ticket for you.