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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (29891)	8/12/2000 2:56:52 PM
From: StockHawk	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Bill, I have not used an e-book yet either, and as far a using one instead of picking up a paperback (such as the latest King novel) I do not see the appeal. However, I can envision several situations where its use would be compelling. College students come to mind first. Loading all your text books on the machine, adding all your notes, being able to back all that up for safety. That sounds like a great idea. Travel books would also seem an excellent market. Instead of bringing along weighty volumes just download a few and you're set. Use the search feature to jump from book to book for the town you are in or to find a restaurant or museum description. The Forbes article seemed to be talking about an e-book as a direct substitute for a single volume, and as with audio books the real book seems better. You get to envision curling up with a good book on a comfy chair with a hot cup of tea. But where e-books make sense is the ability to substitute for numerous volumes. Whether e-books go mainstream or not, GMST will have substantial competition in this area. But since they have Thompson to do the heavy lifting, I like their position. StockHawk

To: LindyBill who wrote (29891)	8/13/2000 12:51:50 PM
From: BDR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Ebooks <<I haven't tried to read from an Ebook yet, so I will hold off on giving an opinion. I am a "bookaholic", and a "early adapter", so I will take a look at it soon.>> I indicated in an earlier post that I had bought an RocketBook to investigate the market. So far I have had a good experience. Setting it up with the CD-ROM supplied was Mac-simple and in a few minutes I was online to the RocketBook site downloading free titles. For most titles the transfer from my computer to the RocketBook was quick enough but the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which took about a minute to download via my DSL line, took 15-20 minutes to transfer to the RocketBook (g). The screen is very readable and a huge improvement over the likes of my Palm III. I think more interesting than the experience of an old fart like me was my 14 year old daughter's response. She saw the RocketBook in its cradle, asked me what it was and, after I showed her, she booted me off the computer. After browsing around the RocketBook site for a while she downloaded several titles and was off to bed with the RocketBook as her reading material. She is a steady reader so the fact that she was reading was not a surprise but the acceptance of the RocketBook was interesting. I think the response of this demographic group may be more predictive of the success of eBooks. If her reading assignments for next year are available as ebooks I will buy them and let her take the RocketBook to school this year. The ability to search, underline, bookmark, and annotate text will help get those papers written. I would love it if her high school would go "all eBook". That backpack filled with 25+ pounds of forest product is getting to be literally a pain. If I hear of generalized adoption, officially or not, among her crowd, I will take that as a good sign. But who knows? **************************************** "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.