Now that the digital revolution is well underway, is it only a matter of time before printed works become obsolete?

I mean, there are e-books now, electronic versions of many titles you’d normally buy at your friendly neighborhood bookstore, but designed to be used in conjunction with an e-book reader or a PDA. These e-books haven’t really taken off, at least not yet, but they have advantages including easy searching for a particular text string and digital bookmarking.

And of course most newspapers and magazines now offer online versions of their publications that you can surf either for free or for a price.

Even reference books are going digital. You can surf online encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri, and if you’re tasked with writing something for the boss — or if you’re the boss and don’t want anyone to know you can’t spell — you can even buy digital versions of some well-known and respected dictionaries from Random House. And while these particular beasts require installation onto your computer rather than just being available online, they’re really quite nifty.

I’ve been trying the digital versions of both Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and Webster’s College Dictionary and was so impressed with how these things work I had to tell you about them.

Available from wordgenius.com, either for download or CD-ROM purchase, once you’ve installed the dictionary onto your PC a little icon called a drag-on (not to be confused with a fire breathing dragon) places itself on your Windows desktop. And this is where it gets slick.

If you’re typing and Microsoft Word, for example, doesn’t have any suggestions for that word with the annoying red squiggly under it, or if you aren’t sure you’ve chosen a word with just the right meaning, you can highlight the word in question and drag it right out of the document and onto the drag-on.

And when you do that, a window pops up virtually instantly, giving you the dictionary’s spelling and definition of that word. It’s so fast you’ll have your answer practically before you release the mouse button!

And it doesn’t just work with Word or other applications like that. You can be surfing a website in your Browser and if you come across an unfamiliar word you can drag it right out of the Browser window and onto the drag-on and the same thing happens. It’s very cool.

You don’t even need to have the entire word to get your digital dictionary working on the case (upper or lower). You can use wild card characters as well, a feature that would come in really handy if you’re spending otherwise productive time working on a crossword puzzle. It’ll also speak the word, kind of, to give you its correct pronunciation, and a View feature lets you change the font and font size to make it easier on your eyes.

I wish I could do that with my printed dictionary now that I’ve been forced to start wearing reading glasses….

On the other hand, now that I have these virtual Websters, I don’t even use the print version anymore. They’re just so darn handy and eager to please! And if you do want a printout, perhaps to prove that you actually did spel, er spell, the word correctly, you can click on the “print” icon and get your evidence the old fashioned way, by killing a tree.

Either of these Webster’s dictionaries is available for $20 U.S. for the download version, or fifty greenbacks for the CD-ROM.

It’s just one more step in what will undoubtedly be a long process that should, one day, actually make printed publications obsolete. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.