I'm not talking about wanting one. If you like a good read, whether hardback, paperback or ebook, why wouldn't you want one? But do you actually need an ebook reader? Can you justify a few hundred dollars for the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader.

Well I don't think you can get into this from the angle of justifying costs - not at the moment anyway. Most consumer electronics fall in price over time but that's not likely to be for a while yet. You could argue that, for the Amazon Kindle at least, best-seller ebooks are considerably cheaper than their paperback equivalent. However, even at a reduction of $5 a time you'd still have to buy eighty books before you start to see any savings. To be fair the Sony Reader editions are also cheaper but not by so much, although the device itself is currently cheaper too.

If you look at it from a convenience angle, then you're talking turkey. Like most avid readers I usually travel with several books. If I'm travelling for business it may be more - and they're cumbersome and heavy. Imagine instead carrying something the size of a single paperback that weighs just 9 or 10 ounces and can hold dozens or even hundreds of books.

Ah, but just hold on a minute, if I'm travelling for business, don't I have a laptop? Couldn't I have my ebooks on my laptop? Isn't an ebook reader now just something else to carry?

That's true, but reading ebooks on laptops really hasn't taken off, has it. The recent increase in ebook popularity is largely down to the Amazon Kindle but ebooks have been around for years. One of the reasons they've never reached mass-market appeal must surely be because reading on a laptop for any decent period of time is, quite frankly, uncomfortable.

And when work's finished for the day and you want to curl up with a good book? On a laptop? If you've ever tried it you'll know instantly the advantage that these ebook reading devices have there.

Then for me there's also the green issue. It's not going to happen overnight but what if we each bought one less "paper" book a month? How many trees stay upright doing what a tree is supposed to do? How much gasoline is saved? How do you put a monetary value on that?

But now I've fallen foul of the very thing I said I wouldn't do at the start of this article. I'm justifying wanting an ebook reader, not whether I need one or not.

Because in fact that's all you can do. Do I need an ebook reader? No. It doesn't make me richer, it won't make me live longer or make me more attractive to members of the opposite sex (in truth I have received one or two admiring glances but sadly I suspect they were for the technology rather than me).

No, the only possible conclusion at the moment is that I don't need an ebook reader. I can't justify it.

I wouldn't be without one either!