We all thought stand-alone e-readers were going to get wiped out by the iPad, but they're still here -- and there are still a slew of reasons to recommend them.

If you're a student, they make a vital addition to your campus survival kit. They can be pricey, and they won't eliminate your need for a laptop, but the initial cost leads to long term advantages. Hardware e-readers give you the ability to rent or borrow digital versions of your textbooks, and in cases where you have to buy an e-book, digital titles are usually cheaper than the hard copies. They're also more interactive, letting you highlight the study points, take notes and share them, and click hyperlinks to go deeper into a topic. Also, the convenience of reading everything on one lightweight device instead of lugging a backpack stuffed with books can't be ignored.

Still, the e-textbook industry is young, and distribution remains shaky -- read our companion piece "Are Textbook Publishers Blowing It...," for more about the roadblocks facing e-texts on campuses.

Here, we run through the most popular options. And you could easily just read books on your tablet, or even on a notebook PC using desktop readers like Nook Study, or a web-based reading app like Amazon's new HTML5-powered Kindle Cloud Reader app. For this reason, we've included a few non-e-ink options at the end.