PDFs and ebook readers are not a good mix. PDFs are designed to look the same on every device and on paper, and that doesn't work well when you've got bigger and smaller readers. A well-made ebook—something that's been made as an ebook—reflows well regardless of the form factor of the device (and there are many).
Also, most devices have zoom/text size capability, and PDFs don't play nicely with that, nor do they really work well with image placement on screen. When you bear in mind that a weighty technical tome like TAoCP has lots of equations, and equations use lots if images, it all gets pretty ugly when you're stuck with a fixed-form PDF.
> PDFs and ebook readers are not a good mix.
I beg to differ. Maybe PDFs and small-screen eInk readers are not a good mix.
For anything technical (computer science/maths) I only buy an eBook if there's a PDF version available (a PDF that looks like the print edition). I've had nothing but bad experience with reflowable formats such as EPUB with technical books. Equations and graphs are stored as low resolution images, any complex layout (floats for example) has to be turned into a strictly linear flow, etc... A vector PDF, on the other hand, is infinitely scalable, so you can zoom in on graphs and equations without any loss of quality.
Also, most devices have zoom/text size capability, and PDFs don't play nicely with that, nor do they really work well with image placement on screen. When you bear in mind that a weighty technical tome like TAoCP has lots of equations, and equations use lots if images, it all gets pretty ugly when you're stuck with a fixed-form PDF.