The big Christmas gift, if disgruntled teens on Twitter are any indication, was the iPad. It’s not just the iPad either, as Amazon has their e-reader, the Amazon Kindle, as their hottest gift of the season. Despite a surge in popularity, I have resisted the allure of the e-reader and tablet computer due to price issues in the usefulness of the tablets and the costs of the e-book market.

To begin, there’s the portability of the tablet, which, unlike the smartphones, are not designed to be portable. It is far too large and heavy to be carried around the way smartphones are, and given their cost and size, the fear of breaking it at a coffee shop, or while walking could be maddening.

Unlike laptops, most tablets lack a keyboard, instead offering a litany of alternatives depending on the model. Most have touch screens which are about as swift as using a self-checkout. Without the straightforward keyboard of a laptop, or the versatility that comes from the compactness of a smart phone, the tablet is left lacking.

Granted there are accessories that fix some of these issues, most notably the attachable keyboards, but that sort of shows the problem. Given how tablets are similar in size to a laptop and the higher end models, the iPad especially, cost the same yet have less computing power, why bother? It would make more sense to buy a low-end laptop, or a netbook, rather than a tablet.

Netbooks are basically mini laptops that only have basic processes like internet and PowerPoint. They are about the same price as a tablet or E-reader, have far more computing power, 1GB memory and 250 GB hard drive, yet have actual keyboards. What’s the point of having a tablet when there are so many superior options?

Unless of course it’s really the e-books purchasers want. The e-book market isn’t the killer app of any of the tablets, except for the Kindle, the product of book seller Amazon.com, but it’s a nascent market. As with any burgeoning market, there are numerous issues that have left me wary of the entire concept.

To begin with, there’s the price difference between e-books and regular books. Consider the prices of a recent popular book, Stephen King’s 11-22-63, which is selling on Amazon in both e-book and hardcover form. The e-book is $14.99, whereas the hardcover is $17.50, a grand savings of $2.51 in exchange for giving up actual ownership of the book.

In exchange for the slightly lower price, the product loses all of the advantage of being an actual physical object. The most basic sacrifice is the durability of having a physical book that can survive a run-in with water, can be written in, used as props and bug killers. Gone too is the textile feel of the paper and page.

More important however, e-books abandon the concept of ownership. It varies by model, but a downloaded book is put into the tablet and e-account so that it can be accessed if anything happens to the tablet. These e-books, however, are subject to company policies regarding downloads.

Consider the iTunes model, which allows songs to be accessed from a total of five different computers before they cannot be accessed unless a computer is de-authorized. This may not seem very consequential, but that’s not the point. The point is, this is not owning a product, it is leasing-plus. The user may have the product, but the company still exerts considerable influence on its use.

Further, it is not even a real product, but rather a digital copy, that cannot be sold or bought or used like their brick and mortar predecessors. By going digital, e-book owners have abandoned the option of reselling their products once finished. Essentially this ensures that only the publishers and main distributors can ever profit off of digital copies; smaller and independent distributors need not apply.

The advent of digital copy may also have a grave impact on the prices of e-books, or any digital product. Again, consider iTunes and how their price system works. Nearly every song is priced the same, from Kelly Clarkson, to The Beatles, to Jesus Jones is $1.29 (as of 12/30/11). There are exceptions, of course, albums have different costs, and there are some less popular songs that are cheaper, but most songs are priced the same.

The reason why everything is priced so similarly is because digital copy removes two crucial forces of retail: rotating product and sales. Barnes and Noble must remove old books to create space for the new. If product isn’t moving it makes more sense to reduce its price, as much as 75%, before returning it to the publisher. The Brick and Mortar model considers profit to be the best, but any revenue is better than no revenue.

For the online store, as long as their computer servers have room to store a digital product, they can. If a product doesn’t sell, merely remove it from the front page, but ensure that it can be found through searching. Imagine e-books, movies, and downloadable TV shows, video games like wiiware, which never decrease in price, regardless of their popularity or age. With unlimited space for unlimited products, there’s less reason to lower prices. If it’s not taking up space, why offer it for less?

Of course there are advantages to the tablets. Being able to reduce thousands of books to a single device will certainly save shelf space, and Stephen King books are easier to carry in digital format. Further, as mentioned, the e-books are cheaper and many books within the public domain are free.

Despite these and other advantages, tablets and e-readers are not for me. A tablet doesn’t offer anything a smartphone, laptop, or netbook can’t. Yet it is harder to use. Even if I wanted an e-book, the digital download market, while useful, has a litany of economic and ownership concerns that leaves me wary.