Paper. Fangs ain't what they used to be...

SPEAKING PERSONALLY, I used to subscribe to upwards of 20 magazines a month in the 80's, now it's down to one- and I don't read it like I used to.

I get all my news off the web or TV. I pay for a newspaper, but I can hardly keep up with it either. I typically run 3-7 days behind on reading that.

I pay about $50 a month for web access which is about half of what I used to spend on magazines back in my peak period.

I still buy books though. I have read a few E-books, well 1 to be precise, and may read more in the future, but nothing matches the sensory impact of the smell, the feel, the joy of OWNING something. Something I can read again and again as many times as I want.

I don't buy computer books though, only Science Fiction. Computer books are obsolete the moment they are published and few hold any value for more than two years. Unless they also have some entertainment value in addition to technical merit, they are a waste of money.

Indeed, I read few on-line sites any more. Yours is one of those. It does have entertainment value in addition to it's news value. (Love those zinger sub-titles!)

So keep up the good work.

I followed you here from the Re- oops! that other place you used to work for.

As long as you don't throw up gratuitous pop-up ads. I even occasonally read your ad content and have even bought from some of them, though I don't buy much on-line either.

That gets into that sensory thing again.

Will print mags survive at all? Mostly I don't think about it. When you think about it, most of the computer mags were in the news business and the immediacy of the Web has put them out of that business. I don't even miss them any more- but I do miss that thrill of looking at all the ads and faunching after all that high priced hardware.

What with the tech wreck and all I don't have the money to spend on computer stuff that I used to spend. The tyranny of bandwidth limitations has been a great equaliser for computer hardware as well and may be partly to blame for the popularity of low priced computers. That may yet suck the life out of the computer revolution, but only time will tell.

I used to believe that nothing would stop the need for ever faster hardware, but the reality is that most apps are fast enough on many machines nowadays. Unless speech to text becomes a major market, or video becomes the only way to do things, the PC market has reached a plateau where it can keep most people happy without getting faster. That means cheaper will win the day.

What will AMD or Intel do if they can't support developing newer and faster CPU's on sales of newer and faster PC's ?

You tell me.

No revolution lasts forever. Sooner or later it becomes the established order and a target for later revolutions.

Cheers,

Frank (email address supplied)