Tablets vs textbooks

A couple of items jumped out at me while reading the ProCon.org article about whether the conversion from textook-based education materials to tablet/e-reader based versions is helpful or harmful for K-12 education.  First of all, it seems like it would be nearly impossible for education research to have kept up with the boom in tablet use over the past year, such that we would be able to make informed decisions about the impacts of table-based learning on education outcomes.  The article cites one study, but it's hard to imagine there's much more information out there at this point - and to me, this seems like it should be enough reason to put the brakes on a push for full-blown tablet-dependency.  Also, the tiny blurb about environmental impacts of tablets vs. textbooks was not very complete (ex. the comparison to textbook impacts only considered paper-making and ignored ink, printing, and especially shipping, which would be expected to be a huge negative for heavy textbooks), which makes me wonder about what other apsects of the "manufacturing cost" analysis were ignored - I'd be particularly interested to know more about who would reap the economic benefits from this transition, and who is pushing for the move?  What about human-rights violations associated with much of the resource extraction and manual labor that takes place in foreign countries so that we can have these fancy gadgets?  Ok ok, getting a little far afield from the education pro's and cons.... 
So what about impacts in the college classroom?  It seems like many of the concerns listed for K-12 ed may not be applicable for college and it seems like the benefits could be huge.  If text book authors and publishers can capitalize on the connectedness to other sources of information, they could lead students to new depths of understanding of their material - I am specifically thinking about things like science text books, where there is usually not a lot of effort at connecting the material in the textbook with current research (aside from some watered-down examples used to illustrate concepts) or with the process of the generation of scientific knowledge.  In traditional textbooks, keeping pace with research or trying to connect students to the research process that generated the accepted content that they're reading about is just not possible given the non-dynamic nature of the printed book.  However, e--textbooks could include links to open-access research articles, or to the websites of the research labs where the examples in the book come from - this would allow students to have guided access to in-depth material on subjects they found interesting, and would hopefully help them gain an appreciation for where this "textbook" knowledge comes from.  I'm sure there are many other possible types of interactions/extensions of the basic material that are already being developed for networked e-textbooks - it seems like the possibilities outweigh the possible negative side-effects for the college environment.