Quick question from a potential buyer

I'm eyeballing AW and it seems cool. Our group of former Role Players have all moved on to families and lives, but I want to draw us back into an RPG for those weeks we're not in the mood for board games.

So, the questions I haven't found answers to yet:

How long do play sessions generally last, in your group?

Do you find satisfaction in a 2-hour session, or does it take 3+ hours to really feel like you've had a good one?

Is anyone playing, say, once or twice a month, and still enjoying it? Or would you lose too much momentum if you can't get together more often than that?

Finally, how feasible is playing with just the PDF, printing out small sections you refer to regularly, and keeping the rest of it on an e-reader? Do you find the hard copy invaluable, or just nice to have?

Obviously there are advantages to the self-contained experience of board games. But I can only play Agricola and Catan so many times without wanting something a bit more creative now and again.

If you go check http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=608.0, you can read all about our game. We've played 11 sessions in 8 months, and it's excellent. I'll answer your other questions below.

How long do play sessions generally last, in your group?
We meet at around 9 pm (after the kids are asleep and Jim gets off work), finish up around midnight. Sometimes we don't get started till close to 10, and it still rocks house.

Is anyone playing, say, once or twice a month, and still enjoying it? Or would you lose too much momentum if you can't get together more often than that?
Currently we are playing roughly every three weeks, we've had breaks of six weeks, and we're planning to deal with a player moving away and going to once a month max, more likely every 6 weeks. I think it will go fine like that for as long as we want. To make this work, make sure someone takes some notes, use MC love letters, and re-calibrate your Fronts as needed. But mostly make sure you have some good notes.

Finally, how feasible is playing with just the PDF, printing out small sections you refer to regularly, and keeping the rest of it on an e-reader? Do you find the hard copy invaluable, or just nice to have?
We use print-outs of the character splats, the basic moves, the MC sheets, a few other things, and mostly refer to whatever PDF or hard-copy is closest to hand for the rest.

Buy it, you will not be sorry. Seriously, it sounds like your group is just right for this game.

Color me convinced. PDF purchased :)

Just on a personal note - does your group use the original tri-fold player sheets, or the John Harper ones?

Original tri-fold. I understand John's are sweet too.

If you are going to be the MC, there's a lot of useful stuff kicking around here. Let us know how it goes.

In the face-to-face game that I'm currently MCing, we play for five or so hours every two weeks but occasionally we miss up to six weeks because of scheduling stuff.  The game handles gaps fine, though I ask my players to remind me what they were up to on our forum before I start writing the love letters for the next session because my memory isn't the best. 

I don't exactly know about your eReader question, but I also play and MC PBP games and I use the PDF on my desktop PC when I need to.  And playing at the table, we started out with a couple of copies of the PDF completely printed out before my whole group had the book.  It's nice having the book but the organization is a little funny and being able to search the PDF is pretty nice.

I got an ereader for unrelated reasons, but I've been pleasantly surprised to find that you can read Apocalypse World on it pretty well.  Kinda small, but what do you expect on an ereader.

Now that I have the PDF I expect it should work well, since the graphics aren't too complex. And I could just read the printer non-violent version to eliminate most of those :)

I forgot to take my book to a con game I ran earlier this year. I just had the playbooks and a few copies of the moves and threat sheets. Had absolutely no problems. Once you've got a grasp of the rules they are all you ever need.