But in either case, if you Joe Shmoe picks one of these up for your own use, what kind of support are you going to get from the channel that typically handles big customers who buy hundreds or thousands of units at a clip?
I'm an individual, and I've generally gotten very good service from IBM on Thinkpads that I and my family own. I've never been stuck on hold. That's a great thing right there. The worst incident I ever had was when a rep sent me the parts to replace my own LCD panel, and she did that at my request, not fully realizing that I didn't have a clue. To IBM's credit, they took all the parts back once I realized I was out of my depth. Then they took the Thinkpad back and fixed that too. And all under warranty.
I'm sure other's mileage may vary, and surely there must be some bad experiences out there, but I've found Thinkpad service to be top-notch, so much so that there are only two brands of notebook that I buy these days: Thinkpad and Apple. (Apple, because that's what you need for OS X).
I somewhat agree with ShimmyShimmy. I am wary of purchasing a new PC before such a major upgrade as Vista. That said, I did purchase a Win 3.1 machine just prior to Win 95, and that upgrade went ok for me. Compaq sent me an upgrade CD that took my machine to Win 95, and the only software issue I recalled hitting was that all my software still used short filenames. And that was not a very significant issue. In fact, I'd have likely hit that issue anyway.
Where that Win95 upgrade caused pain later were all those times over the years that I had to reinstall Windows. Each time, I had to put on 3.1 first, and then run the upgrade to Win 95. What a pain that was. I was so happy the day I decided to throw that PC into the dump. (I ran it for many, many years though).
Now I'm faced with the same dilema about buying just before a major release. I want a new laptop. And as if the looming release of Vista isn't enough on its own to give me pause, I see that Vista comes in five(!) flavors. So Vista is not Vista is not Vista. My daughter runs a Mac, and at least in that world OS X is OS X is OS X. Maybe I'll buy a Macbook this time around. The current crop of Macbooks is very nicely done. I like them.
If I get a good price on a new laptop, I might take the plunge this year. Otherwise, I'm going to sit back and wait a bit. Fortunately, while I do need something eventually, I'm not under any great time-pressure to buy now.
My daughter wants to replace her iBook with a Macbook. She's waiting for Leopard. So that means next year for her too.
My son just got a new gaming console and decided to just quit gaming on the PC altogether. He is trading me his desktop for my old laptop so that he has something for email and the web. None of his friends game on a PC anymore. All the kids that I know have gone to consoles.
All our PCs still actually work for what we do with them. If push came to shove, we really don't need anything new. I suspect a lot of people are in that position. It just is not necessary these days to upgrade all that often, not for most people.
So yeah, I can see why the PC sales might slump a bit over the next couple of months. And book sales too. I work for a publisher. In general, the whole computer book publishing industry is counting on Vista to drive a nice bunch of book sales. Anything that happens with Vista has quite the ripple effect.
I'll consider error codes for the third edition. I'm always interested, btw, in hearing about what you miss in the book. It's really hard to pick and choose what to put in. Not everything fits, and I'm constantly making judgment calls about what to put in and what to leave out.
I don't think it would be much for OReilly to include sqlite in the handbook.
FWIW, I did run most of the example queries, those that aren't specific to Oracle, DB2, etc., against SQLite. And SQLite handles pretty much everything in the book that is not vendor-specific. I didn't specifically call out SQLite in the book, because to do so would force me to add sections on datatypes and conversion functions, and I was already over the top of my pagecount.
BTW, I was the original editor behind Michael Owens' "The Definitive Guide to SQLite". Michael began working on that book while I was at O'Reilly. We both eventually ended up over at Apress.
One 'gripe' is that the author changed the structure of his website since the book was published, so all of the book urls are broken.
I truly, truly, am trying to get all those URLs back in working order. Some articles I've gotten back up. Others not. I always seem to be behind the eight-ball when it comes to getting work done though. Even tonight I'm working late on my day-job.
Heh. Had I known I was going to get Slashdotted, I might have pulled a few all-nighters to get all my articles back up on my site:-).
BTW, I didn't just change the structure of my site. I installed Drupal. It was clear to me that my own web development skills basically suck. Drupal, on the other hand, is a well-done content manager. In the end, I think my site will be better running on Drupal than on my own, hacked up HTML.
I've been involved for publishing for some years now, having written books of my own, edited for O'Reilly, and now I am with Apress. I don't know it all, but I do have some experience with publishing economics. The cost of paper and printing (i.e., the cost of the physical book) is fairly inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. A 500 or so page book like my Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide probably costs in the neighborhood of USD 3.00 per copy to print and bind.
So it's not the cost of the paper:-).
What drives prices is the need to make a profit and pay all the people involved. All the editorial, production, and marketing costs must be borne by the quantity of a given book that a publisher expects to sell over that book's lifetime, and that quantity is often quite low. Sales projections of less than 20,000 units over a three year period are quite common, and many books will never even break the 10,000 unit mark. The high pricing that you see, and reader's willingness to pay it, is what allows many tech books to even exist.
In the end, it does all boil down to supply and demand. The smaller a given market is, the higher the share of cost each customer must bear.
And that SQL*Plus book I mentioned earlier? The second edition released in November 2004. Since then it has sold 1060 units, making me a total of $2883.91. In hindsight, it wasn't worth the effort to produce the second edition. I've had other books do better though, and in the long run the averages work out well enough that I'm happy (given that writing is supplemental income, and not my primary source). Publishers play the averages too. Some books will break out and be very profitable. Most will not. It is rarely easy to determine which is which until after the fact.
I have not found what Ed Bott to be true. Perhaps it is because my older Dells were purchased in the pre-Windows XP days, and thus I'm always reinstalling my Windows XP upgrades, but I do, in fact, need to active each and every time I reinstall.
He acknowledged that the US wants to keep space peaceful
But we fill it with military hardware and targets. Our actions give the lie to our words. We are the ones who have made space "not peaceful". And that's just the way it has to be, because I for one am quite happy to keep our military satalites and surveillance capabilities in place. I just get sick of the double-talk. Space is a legitimate battle-ground. Too bad, but that's the way it is.
You'd be surprised what goes on technology-wise in small towns. I live in a small town of about 2800 people. O'Reilly has a presence here, as does Optimax Publishing.
This is good news from several fronts. One thing I like about it is that it gives high-school students a marketable skill. It's always been a pet peeve of mine that we can send kids to school for 12 years (grades 1-12) and when they come out the other side we still haven't imbued them with skills to make a living.
Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta
on
Why VHS Was Better
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· Score: 1
You aren't the only one. The memory stick, IMHO, is a bad idea. All Sony did was to add yet another memory card into the game. And for what? Because of the "not invented here" syndrome?
I try to keep all my devices on the same memory standard. The last thing I want is to have to buy and keep around two or three different types of memory cards. At the moment, if it doesn't support Compact Flash, I try to buy something else that does.
Someday I'll probably be forced to change. Compaq, I notice, doesn't support Compact Flash in their iPaqs.
Open Office is a great office environment that meets all my needs and I have yet to meet someone that genuinely *NEEDS* anything that Word has, that OO does not
I edit books for a living, and spend much of my day reading and editing text. Open Office is indeed quite good, and I'm actually using it quite successfully on two of my book projects. Correction, I should say the authors and I are actually using it.
Good as it is however, Open Office does have some rough edges. It can be extraordinarily sluggish sometimes. Just hit F11 to open the style window, select "all styles", and then type a few letters. Editing becomes dog-slow with that style window open, and yet I must have that window open because a big part of my job is to apply the correct styles. Other features could certainly use some polishing too.
I in no way want to slam Open Office. It's a good effort, and for a 1.0 version is actually quite good. In fact, I'm installing it on the family PC and maybe on my daughter's PC. But if you were paying for my time, you'd find that it takes me longer to get through a chapter using Open Office than using Word. The fact that Open Office is "free" is meaningless to my boss, because in the long run Word is easily more cost-effective, in my particular environment.
So, do I *need* any features that Open Office doesn't have? I don't think so. Except that the ability to run Word macros would certainly be a time-saver. However, even though I don't strictly *need* any features, it would sure save me time and my company money if certain features were improved.
This is an interesting enough issue that I may write a longer article about it sometime. But today is Christmas Eve and my son wants me to take him to Marquette, so I've got to run.
Covers sometimes get changed after they've gone out to Amazon and other electronic book sites. Getting corrections out takes some time and is more difficult than you might expect.
Despite all records to the contrary XP does in fact crash reading email.
Heh. You bet. XP crashed on me today while I was reading my email. I was literally reading an email when for no reason at all that I can fathom, my PC up and rebooted. Yesterday I lost a couple hours work due to a damaged profile. On the other hand, XP's rollback feature saved the day for me, so maybe it was a wash.
I've vacationed near Wawa, Ontario several times, and I just want to say that it's a beautiful area of Canada. I know this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but the mention of Wawa brings back memories of camping on the shore of Agawa Bay, and also memory of once getting thoroughly lost near Rabbit Blanket Lake campground.
I'm not expecting anything but the same in return. The economy being in the shitter has impacted everyone in my family, and in some cliched sense we are returning to the true spirit of Christmas.
Wouldn't the true spirit of Christmas have something to do with Druids and trees?
Re:Man, where's the "%" key...?
on
Virtual Keyboard
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· Score: 1
How common is it for people on the Net to not be able to touchtype these days?
I think there are lots of us who touchtype just fine except for some of the less-frequently-used characters, which was the point the original poster was trying to make.
Check each minute instead of once an hour (or worse)
The above is the one thing I disagree on. I need large blocks of uninterrupted time in order to get work done. I'd be worthless if I checked email once per minute. I check every hour or two, or whenever I feel the need for a break, but not every minute. If you need me that urgently, phone me.
I'm always amazed by people who will send me a number of emails marked URGENT!, and get upset at me because I don't respond right away, but who won't think to just pick up the phone and dial my number.
Static IP's I can understand, but the people who really need them can pay for them. *GASP!* Heresy!
I would pay, but even in the face of my willingness to pay, my ISP won't provide me with a static IP address. Why they leave money on the table is beyond me. It's a bit frustrating.
Slashdot Mirror
The X61s (only the s model) has had the option of LED backlighting for quite some time.
But in either case, if you Joe Shmoe picks one of these up for your own use, what kind of support are you going to get from the channel that typically handles big customers who buy hundreds or thousands of units at a clip?
I'm an individual, and I've generally gotten very good service from IBM on Thinkpads that I and my family own. I've never been stuck on hold. That's a great thing right there. The worst incident I ever had was when a rep sent me the parts to replace my own LCD panel, and she did that at my request, not fully realizing that I didn't have a clue. To IBM's credit, they took all the parts back once I realized I was out of my depth. Then they took the Thinkpad back and fixed that too. And all under warranty.
I'm sure other's mileage may vary, and surely there must be some bad experiences out there, but I've found Thinkpad service to be top-notch, so much so that there are only two brands of notebook that I buy these days: Thinkpad and Apple. (Apple, because that's what you need for OS X).
I somewhat agree with ShimmyShimmy. I am wary of purchasing a new PC before such a major upgrade as Vista. That said, I did purchase a Win 3.1 machine just prior to Win 95, and that upgrade went ok for me. Compaq sent me an upgrade CD that took my machine to Win 95, and the only software issue I recalled hitting was that all my software still used short filenames. And that was not a very significant issue. In fact, I'd have likely hit that issue anyway.
Where that Win95 upgrade caused pain later were all those times over the years that I had to reinstall Windows. Each time, I had to put on 3.1 first, and then run the upgrade to Win 95. What a pain that was. I was so happy the day I decided to throw that PC into the dump. (I ran it for many, many years though).
Now I'm faced with the same dilema about buying just before a major release. I want a new laptop. And as if the looming release of Vista isn't enough on its own to give me pause, I see that Vista comes in five(!) flavors. So Vista is not Vista is not Vista. My daughter runs a Mac, and at least in that world OS X is OS X is OS X. Maybe I'll buy a Macbook this time around. The current crop of Macbooks is very nicely done. I like them.
If I get a good price on a new laptop, I might take the plunge this year. Otherwise, I'm going to sit back and wait a bit. Fortunately, while I do need something eventually, I'm not under any great time-pressure to buy now.
My daughter wants to replace her iBook with a Macbook. She's waiting for Leopard. So that means next year for her too.
My son just got a new gaming console and decided to just quit gaming on the PC altogether. He is trading me his desktop for my old laptop so that he has something for email and the web. None of his friends game on a PC anymore. All the kids that I know have gone to consoles.
All our PCs still actually work for what we do with them. If push came to shove, we really don't need anything new. I suspect a lot of people are in that position. It just is not necessary these days to upgrade all that often, not for most people.
So yeah, I can see why the PC sales might slump a bit over the next couple of months. And book sales too. I work for a publisher. In general, the whole computer book publishing industry is counting on Vista to drive a nice bunch of book sales. Anything that happens with Vista has quite the ripple effect.
I'll consider error codes for the third edition. I'm always interested, btw, in hearing about what you miss in the book. It's really hard to pick and choose what to put in. Not everything fits, and I'm constantly making judgment calls about what to put in and what to leave out.
I don't think it would be much for OReilly to include sqlite in the handbook.
FWIW, I did run most of the example queries, those that aren't specific to Oracle, DB2, etc., against SQLite. And SQLite handles pretty much everything in the book that is not vendor-specific. I didn't specifically call out SQLite in the book, because to do so would force me to add sections on datatypes and conversion functions, and I was already over the top of my pagecount.
BTW, I was the original editor behind Michael Owens' "The Definitive Guide to SQLite". Michael began working on that book while I was at O'Reilly. We both eventually ended up over at Apress.
SQLite is a cool product.
One 'gripe' is that the author changed the structure of his website since the book was published, so all of the book urls are broken.
:-).
I truly, truly, am trying to get all those URLs back in working order. Some articles I've gotten back up. Others not. I always seem to be behind the eight-ball when it comes to getting work done though. Even tonight I'm working late on my day-job.
Heh. Had I known I was going to get Slashdotted, I might have pulled a few all-nighters to get all my articles back up on my site
BTW, I didn't just change the structure of my site. I installed Drupal. It was clear to me that my own web development skills basically suck. Drupal, on the other hand, is a well-done content manager. In the end, I think my site will be better running on Drupal than on my own, hacked up HTML.
They don't charge mor because it's black, they charge more because the black one comes with a bigger hard drive by default.
$200 for 20GB? That difference in hard-drive size is just a distractor. They are charging for the color black.
I've been involved for publishing for some years now, having written books of my own, edited for O'Reilly, and now I am with Apress. I don't know it all, but I do have some experience with publishing economics. The cost of paper and printing (i.e., the cost of the physical book) is fairly inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. A 500 or so page book like my Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide probably costs in the neighborhood of USD 3.00 per copy to print and bind.
:-).
So it's not the cost of the paper
What drives prices is the need to make a profit and pay all the people involved. All the editorial, production, and marketing costs must be borne by the quantity of a given book that a publisher expects to sell over that book's lifetime, and that quantity is often quite low. Sales projections of less than 20,000 units over a three year period are quite common, and many books will never even break the 10,000 unit mark. The high pricing that you see, and reader's willingness to pay it, is what allows many tech books to even exist.
In the end, it does all boil down to supply and demand. The smaller a given market is, the higher the share of cost each customer must bear.
And that SQL*Plus book I mentioned earlier? The second edition released in November 2004. Since then it has sold 1060 units, making me a total of $2883.91. In hindsight, it wasn't worth the effort to produce the second edition. I've had other books do better though, and in the long run the averages work out well enough that I'm happy (given that writing is supplemental income, and not my primary source). Publishers play the averages too. Some books will break out and be very profitable. Most will not. It is rarely easy to determine which is which until after the fact.
I have not found what Ed Bott to be true. Perhaps it is because my older Dells were purchased in the pre-Windows XP days, and thus I'm always reinstalling my Windows XP upgrades, but I do, in fact, need to active each and every time I reinstall.
I tend to agree. My Geo Metro routinely gets 42MPG on trips. Hybrids don't claim to be enough better than that to really impress me.
UNSTRING? ALTER ... TO PROCEED TO...? Oh, man. Those were the days. I actually liked COBOL. You could do magic with it sometimes.
But we fill it with military hardware and targets. Our actions give the lie to our words. We are the ones who have made space "not peaceful". And that's just the way it has to be, because I for one am quite happy to keep our military satalites and surveillance capabilities in place. I just get sick of the double-talk. Space is a legitimate battle-ground. Too bad, but that's the way it is.
Er, we actually just edit the books. It's the authors who write them.
I tried to look at it, but the photo was on edge, and, like the rings of Saturn, it just dissappeared.
It's one small notebook.
You'd be surprised what goes on technology-wise in small towns. I live in a small town of about 2800 people. O'Reilly has a presence here, as does Optimax Publishing.
This is good news from several fronts. One thing I like about it is that it gives high-school students a marketable skill. It's always been a pet peeve of mine that we can send kids to school for 12 years (grades 1-12) and when they come out the other side we still haven't imbued them with skills to make a living.
You aren't the only one. The memory stick, IMHO, is a bad idea. All Sony did was to add yet another memory card into the game. And for what? Because of the "not invented here" syndrome?
I try to keep all my devices on the same memory standard. The last thing I want is to have to buy and keep around two or three different types of memory cards. At the moment, if it doesn't support Compact Flash, I try to buy something else that does.
Someday I'll probably be forced to change. Compaq, I notice, doesn't support Compact Flash in their iPaqs.
I edit books for a living, and spend much of my day reading and editing text. Open Office is indeed quite good, and I'm actually using it quite successfully on two of my book projects. Correction, I should say the authors and I are actually using it.
Good as it is however, Open Office does have some rough edges. It can be extraordinarily sluggish sometimes. Just hit F11 to open the style window, select "all styles", and then type a few letters. Editing becomes dog-slow with that style window open, and yet I must have that window open because a big part of my job is to apply the correct styles. Other features could certainly use some polishing too.
I in no way want to slam Open Office. It's a good effort, and for a 1.0 version is actually quite good. In fact, I'm installing it on the family PC and maybe on my daughter's PC. But if you were paying for my time, you'd find that it takes me longer to get through a chapter using Open Office than using Word. The fact that Open Office is "free" is meaningless to my boss, because in the long run Word is easily more cost-effective, in my particular environment.
So, do I *need* any features that Open Office doesn't have? I don't think so. Except that the ability to run Word macros would certainly be a time-saver. However, even though I don't strictly *need* any features, it would sure save me time and my company money if certain features were improved.
This is an interesting enough issue that I may write a longer article about it sometime. But today is Christmas Eve and my son wants me to take him to Marquette, so I've got to run.
Covers sometimes get changed after they've gone out to Amazon and other electronic book sites. Getting corrections out takes some time and is more difficult than you might expect.
Heh. You bet. XP crashed on me today while I was reading my email. I was literally reading an email when for no reason at all that I can fathom, my PC up and rebooted. Yesterday I lost a couple hours work due to a damaged profile. On the other hand, XP's rollback feature saved the day for me, so maybe it was a wash.
I've vacationed near Wawa, Ontario several times, and I just want to say that it's a beautiful area of Canada. I know this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but the mention of Wawa brings back memories of camping on the shore of Agawa Bay, and also memory of once getting thoroughly lost near Rabbit Blanket Lake campground.
Wouldn't the true spirit of Christmas have something to do with Druids and trees?
The above is the one thing I disagree on. I need large blocks of uninterrupted time in order to get work done. I'd be worthless if I checked email once per minute. I check every hour or two, or whenever I feel the need for a break, but not every minute. If you need me that urgently, phone me.
I'm always amazed by people who will send me a number of emails marked URGENT!, and get upset at me because I don't respond right away, but who won't think to just pick up the phone and dial my number.
I would pay, but even in the face of my willingness to pay, my ISP won't provide me with a static IP address. Why they leave money on the table is beyond me. It's a bit frustrating.