[forgottenpaswrd]

"The cash-strapped college student would be best served by a cheap netbook, or if the student insists on a variety of media appliances, perhaps a laptop with a large screen. That should be adequate for any sort of interactive content, and a plethora of free content."

This student will be best server for a cheap tablet, not laptop or netbook. You need "portrait mode", instead of panoramic to really read fast and well, there is some reasons for that(), but laptops need to be only panoramic because of the keyboard.

It is not a coincidence that all document papers are portrait, and xerox Palo Alto graphical UI computer was portrait. Computers are panoramic because at first they used commercial TVs(Steve Wozniak monitor) because it was already mass produced and cheap.

()with columns like in a newspaper you are able to read "between lines" because you eye see in a circle area. You don't need to move left and right, just down. Your eye doesn't need to adapt to different level of dept, and some more.

[sprout]

You're presuming a specific text-to-screen width ratio. I tend to favor reading at very high font size on the 7" netbook I'm presently using.

Also, my finger/hand/arm never gets in the way while scrolling.