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To: rudyprins who wrote (33162)	10/15/2000 4:22:26 AM
From: Seeker of Truth	Respond to of 54805

I don't see any threat to GMST in locally produced textbooks on line or interactive courses, IMHO interactive courses are only useful for skill training in basics such as arithmetic, languages etc. A good book on, say, differential equations, need only present the explanations the problems and, in another section of the book, the answers. Interaction is simply a pain there. The really great textbook on subject X is a whale of a lot better than the run of the mill texts which various professors churn out. The market will prescribe the really great textbook for the course in subject X in a huge fraction of the universities. A set of these really great texts costs a lot, much much more than downloading to an E-Book. I don't know if GMST has a lock on this technology but it sure looks like a coming tornado to me.

To: rudyprins who wrote (33162)	10/15/2000 11:59:36 AM
From: highcountry	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Out of lurk mode as well. Rudy, The convenience of not having to haul around all those books,might be considered one of the Grabbers your looking for. I have three children at the high school level and it's painful to watch them carry these very heavy packs every day. If their texts were available in an e-book format we would probably own several. Regards, Highcountry

To: rudyprins who wrote (33162)	10/15/2000 11:46:11 PM
From: tinkershaw	Respond to of 54805

So, all this said, I wonder if readers/e-books will ever really become a large market for e-books in educational institutions (precollege as well). These institutions have been hugh markets for textbooks, of course. If so, what will be the "grabber" that will make students willingly devote themselves to the use of readers in their college (precollege) years. To students, books are books and a reader only represents access, as a library does, which they like to avoid as well. Thoughts, and does any of this spell concern for GMST? I love the textbook market. Very centralized in regard to grabbing publishers; you have a very large group of early tech adopters and a very large value proposition to these students. In addition, the value added services you could pile on at little cost to no cost or added cumbersomeness is great. The big problem here is the technology and costs. The 1100 model does not serve well as a textbook reader. The 1200 model however may serve this purpose very well. The GoReader possibly even better (except for lack of security). So at a minimum a student will need to put $699 out for the 1200 model. The 1200 model is capable of displaying a full page, in color, of a Sports Illustrated, or of a textbook. The 1100 pretty much displays 1/2 to 1/3 pages on a screen and has only primitive graphics capabilities. That is not to say that educational institutions would be adverse to $699 models, just that mass consumers are likely to. I don't envision more than a few tens of thousands at most of the high-end model being sold to the mass consumer market. Again, to get high penetration, the need is to target audiences with a more compelling need for the technology and let this penetration build more demand and diffuse through to other categories. Tinker