Hi John,

>Doug
>
>Market theory used to say that we as customers would drive progress by our demands.
>
>In the monopoly age, market theory says that big business can decide what it best for "it" and just do it, using "marketing" to show us how much better off we are.
>
>For example: one of my credit cards recently shortened the time between invoice and payment by 10 days. On the invoice it had a happy message "The reason your payment date is now earlier is because you now have up to 45 days credit!" Well, I used to have up to 60 days credit. Wow, I'm so pleased by the happy change!
>
>I'm hardly a conspiracy theorist, but that is certainly the way of it.
>
>I vote for pixels winning out, just because it is cheaper. Paper will become a luxury option- sort of like hardback books vs softback.
>
>Regards
>
>JR

But isn't your last statement just your confession that you've bought into the marketing hype *on this issue*?
I think it's still too early to "for pixels winning out", especially if the argument is "just because it's cheaper". The actual paper and printing process do add some cost, of course, but I think that we who know little about details far overrate that cost significantly. And books surely add weight which increases transport cost. Again, though, it is really pennies per product.

Now if they truly took agvantage of what pixels can offer I'd be singing a different tune. A modest example of what I mean is the difference in the electronic formats of the "Hacker's Guide for VFP 6" versus any of the other books I have from the Hentzenwerkes series. Yet that is only a starting point in my opinion. So much potential to truly make pixels more useful yet untapped.

Cheers,

JimN