Re: Format of choice for immediate offline reading, easy sharing or simple portability
I regularly come across people who "must" have fax. I come across them once anyway, then I don't do business with them. This is probably harder when you are owned or controlled by someone with their mind still in the 90's.
I do see people trying to use PDFs for backup purposes. Someone once asked me if a printout of his emails would be suitable for an enquiry. I advised that it would be good proof that he had access to a printer but not of much else. He then asked if it would be any better if he saved them as .PDFs. I pointed out that this would not even prove that he had a printer but it would be more tree friendly!