About workbooks

The issue of workbooks, their price and usefulness has come up once again as in every autumn. The teacher's newspaper in Estonia is full of comments on the issue.
The government of Estonia has expressed a wish to move towards helping the parents with the money (which sometimes is nearly a 1000 EEK) that is spent on the workbooks each year and I'm sure that everyone who hears the idea would at first feel happy about it.
(Especially the students who weren't able to collect the workbook money by the deadline...)

But there is always a but as they say.

The reason, why I am writing on the topic, is that I would appreciate your feedback and opinions.
It's common knowledge fact that at our high school everybody has to buy the GrammarWay 'workbook' as well as at least 2 English workbooks during the three years. (Yes, some of you people are lucky - I mean the Puzzle people ...)

The authors in the Teacher's Newspaper argue that workbooks are maybe necessary in lower grades but by the time students get to high school they become useless. The danger in government funding the purchase of the workbooks is that the publishing houses issuing workbooks would become sort of monopolies that get their profits anyway because the schools feel more relaxed in ordering these.
Everything, of course, depends on whether the government wants to give the money to the parents as a sort of schooling support or to the schools in order to provide free education - so for the students the workbooks would seem free of charge.
That's where the catch is.

How many exercises do you find useful in the English language workbook? Those using the Upstream books probably agree that the exercises in the workbook are just for revision of the same things that one finds in the books. For some students that sort of 'revision' is good for improving the language skills but for those who are already familiar with the topic/language issues/grammar that is revised, it's utter waste of time and money :) Surely there are other subjects where workbooks are used - so feel free to comment on these as well... I only remember some from my childhood - usually thrown away in spring with a couple of pages filled in and most left empty.

Our E-government has also suggested an idea of e-workbooks but it seems that the pros and cons of e-workbooks might be the same as we have discussed in our for-and-against essays about using the Internet and computers in classroom work. One of the minuses that the newspaper points out is that when a teacher would want to print out the whole 'e-workbook' it would cost more than printing workbooks in large publishing houses (and if that would not be the case then our present workbooks must be seriously overpriced). What is more, they do not find authors to compile these e-workbooks and haven't solved the issue of copyright and payment.

I like the idea of virtual workbooks to some extent.

• Supposing that I had the projector in class (as we do now in the library) - I could just project the task on the screen and let you do it. You can still develop your writing skills and do not damage your eyes by looking at a flickering computer screen.
  
  
• I could hold my lesson in an IT class where everybody could do the exercises on the computer and send them to me to correct at the end of the class as well as save them and print them out later if they wish.
  
  
• I could give everybody different revision exercises as people have different skills and different needs.
  

None of the above-mentioned would require carrying along heavy glossy-papered workbooks. But most probably the school would have to pay somebody who compiled the workbook to be able to use these in class. At the moment I somehow get the feeling that we use the workbooks because we don't want to see our money wasted not because there are any serious benefits involved.

In conclusion - my question is: how much use do you have of workbooks in different lessons and what do you like and dislike about them?!