I stand corrected, I've never seen hand held readers before. A couple of problems spring to mind.
1/ If your going to store books on microfiche, your filing and labeling system is going to have to be good...no electronic word searchs available
2/ Wouldn't all the diagrams and pictures be in the "negative" state, making them hard to follow.
On the positive side you'll have a vast source of data in a small physical (as opposed to electronic) state and space.(Ihope this makes sense!) I would also imagine they make excellent fire lighters.
I wonder if it is possible to carry to much info, wasting to much time searching for info when you should be looking after the basics...? This applies to all methods of information storage not just microfiche.
My humble conclusion is that it should be used as one of several means of obtaining info, maybe as a backup to the battery hungry handheld palmtop.
martin