Product Reviews: Windows XP

Written by Richard Lowe


Well, Windows XP is finally out. After years of hype and hundreds of articles and lots of promotion,repparttar new and wonderful, world changing operating system is here. Harrah.

Forrepparttar 133573 home user this is a very good thing indeed. The earlier, DOS based operating systems such as Windows 95, 98 and ME were very unstable and had more or less lived out their usefulness.

In fact, I believe most home users will find Windows XP to be a very nice change indeed. The new operating system has many advantages which make it so superior torepparttar 133574 earlier versions of Windows as to make it almost heavenly.

Some ofrepparttar 133575 advantages whichrepparttar 133576 home user will see include:

Plug-and-play that really works - In my book, this is probably one ofrepparttar 133577 hugest time-savers of all. Personally, I love to add new hardware from time-to-time, and changes to existing equipment is almost a daily occurrence. The truly superb plug-and-play makes this completely trivial.

Stability - Windows XP is so stable as to be spooky. Don't get me wrong, a crash or two now and then still happens (as with all operating systems and equipment) but it's no longerrepparttar 133578 daily occurrence that it was with windows 95 orrepparttar 133579 three-times-daily occurrence with Windows ME.

Well designed networking - I foundrepparttar 133580 networking capabilities of repparttar 133581 older operating systems to be difficult and touchy. Windows XP has changed all of that -repparttar 133582 networking setups and easy and quick. Combined with plug-and-play forrepparttar 133583 hardware, you should find adding an XP machine torepparttar 133584 network to be so simple as to be freaky.

The Future of Electronic Publishing

Written by Sam Vaknin


UNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is:

""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers".

The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place inrepparttar last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) wererepparttar 133572 last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubtrepparttar 133573 business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong:repparttar 133574 dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace,repparttar 133575 hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward,repparttar 133576 software unwieldy,repparttar 133577 e-books badly written or already inrepparttar 133578 public domain.

Terrified byrepparttar 133579 inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and byrepparttar 133580 ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights management"). This further alienatedrepparttar 133581 few potential readers left. The opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouragingrepparttar 133582 dissemination of free copies ofrepparttar 133583 promoted book) was only marginally more successful.

Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform,repparttar 133584 Internet, has been transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.

>From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less friendly towards independent (small) publishers,repparttar 133585 backbone of e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle from consideringrepparttar 133586 Internet to berepparttar 133587 next big thing in New Media delivery - to frantic efforts to containrepparttar 133588 red ink it oozed all over their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.

But wererepparttar 133589 now silent pundits right allrepparttar 133590 same? Isrepparttar 133591 future of publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined withrepparttar 133592 Internet?

The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information (with precious few exceptions, likerepparttar 133593 "Wall Street Journal"'s electronic edition). Moreover,repparttar 133594 Internet, with 3 billion pages listed inrepparttar 133595 Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible" databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product, no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models. But this is besidesrepparttar 133596 point. Whether inrepparttar 133597 form of subscription (Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and pay to buyrepparttar 133598 physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) -repparttar 133599 public refuses to cough up.

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