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BUI - Some thoughts on traffic/Some thoughts on tablets

That's right. It's the "holiday season," and I'm Blogging Under the Influence again.

I was planning on taking a few days off, but there's something about the Cuban rum that makes me want to share my thoughts with the rest of the world. I would have done it in the bar I was just at, but the music was too loud, and I get the feeling that nobody would have enjoyed what I had to say.

What I want to say consists of two (2) things. I will now present each of these things in reverse order of importance, meaning that the least important thing will come first.

1. Just a friendly reminder: The left lane is for passing. The middle lane is for cruising. The right lane is for traveling at irritatingly low speeds, and for entering and exiting the freeway. Next holiday season, please do your best to remember this. I spent a little too much time behind mini-vans in the left lane traveling at 50 MPH today.

2. If I were the wealthy parent of a child between the ages of 12 and 18, I would immediately purchase a tablet PC for him/her. The combination of OneNote and Encarta would be so incredibly helpful for school that it's mind boggling. I remember the "good old days" when I had to use that stupid index card system to find books in the library. The books were all indexed with really intuitive labels like "A.028fe222." I don't want to say that this is the reason I dropped out of high school, but let's just say that it pissed me off a little that it often took in upwards of five minutes just to discover that the book I wanted was already checked out. Being able to carry those books around in a tablet would be a huge improvement.

You know, while I'm on the subject, I'd also like to say that a tablet would be awesome for college students. I know it isn't likely to happen anytime in the near future, but it would be incredible to be able to purchase all your textbooks in e-book format and then read them on a tablet. The only thing getting in the way that I can think of is the small problem of the Mafia running every college bookstore in the country. With books selling for as much as a couple hundred dollars a copy, it seems unlikely that many publishers would be willing to let profits slide for the convenience of publishing to the e-book format. Guido's probably going to come and break my legs just for mentioning it.

I went with my girlfriend to buy college books recently, and was appalled at the cost. I can't see what the justification could possibly be. It's kind of freaky to think that money could be saved by purchasing a tablet, but that's the current state of things.

In spite of the cost, however, I think that the convenience of being able to carry your textbooks, notebooks, and an encyclopedia around in one container would outweigh even a slight increase in overall cost (books + tablet).

But that's just my opinion. Probably slightly influenced by this stirring desire I have to purchase a tablet.

You might say that I have tablet envy.

Published Saturday, December 27, 2003 7:14 AM by Rory

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Comments

 

Stuart said:

I'm pretty sure I know why college text books cost so much. It's because of all the work that goes into the next edition -- you know, the edition where many of the glaring inaccuracies are corrected. Of course many new and heinous errors are introduced in the editing process, so the price never really goes down. But that's okay; just understanding things usually makes them easier to deal with. I mean, once you realize the book publishers are charging you sky-high prices simply because their products are riddled with errors to the point of being worthless, you feel better about the world, right?
December 27, 2003 3:45 PM
 

TJ said:

You know all of what you said makes perfect sense. Its too bad most people are sheep and just go with the flow.

I mean I see kids today with backbacks that have rollers on them...If I had kids in school I would scan all of their books into a tablet pc...its really sad that we have the technology but there are people out there who dont want to change.

Sort of like the big oil companies...but thats a whole other story.
December 27, 2003 5:34 PM
 

Ed Strong said:

Text books aren't price sensitive. The Prof says "Economics" by X and therefore you can't buy "Economics" by Y. Authors are paid via royalties as a percent of the cover price, thus they are happy with the high sticker price. High prices mean the bookstores can create a "used" text market and make as much or more by recycling the text on the second (and third) time around.
Oh yes: Tablets rule! But I can't get my students to make the move from their standard notebooks. They need more direct exposure to the advantages.
December 27, 2003 6:17 PM
 

milbertus said:

At my alma mater (http://www.rose-hulman.edu) they actually include the price of a laptop into the price of tutition. Granted, you don't get to pick out the laptop you want, but every student gets the exact same laptop (which helps out with lowering support costs, I'm sure).

Anyway, it seems like that would be the perfect market to try the whole tablet thing out. Instead of "giving" each student a laptop, why not give them a tablet instead? The culture shock of getting a tablet instead of a laptop would probably be hard to overcome, but that's probably very doable, given time.
December 27, 2003 6:28 PM
 

Avonelle Lovhaug said:

My oldest son started his first year of college last September. We were going to get him a tablet pc for graduation, but his college supplies an IBM thinkpad with his tuition, so we figured we'd just go with that. (He got an XBox instead, so it worked out fine for him.) The laptop is great, but his professors didn't necessarily warm to the thing. One of his professors has strict rules about using them during class, and another one banned the use of them altogether. What was his reasoning? Students were sometimes not paying attention during class, and instead were checking their email! Of course, my son argued that so long as students weren't disturbing others, what difference did it make that they were wasting time in class? (After all - they are paying for it!) This argument fell on deaf ears, however. Since he is a commuting student without a car (he takes the bus), he didn't want to start bringing notebook paper to class also. (His bag is already a big heavy brick!) His solution around the ban was to whip out his Pocket PC and take notes on that. Apparently, PDAs are acceptable - just not the college provided laptops. Geez!

It would have been great if he could get electronic copies of his textbooks. If he only had to carry the laptop (and he was allowed to use it in class) his life would be a ton better.
December 27, 2003 8:25 PM
 

Andy said:

Rory,
This is what I always do for my college books: Since I already new what classes I would be taking the next quarter I would go around to the teachers and ask them which books would be needed by what authors for their class the upcoming quarter (this was at PSU and PCC). I would get my book list and then go to half.com and get as many as I could. I literally saved thousands over time because I averaged 80 bucks a quarter in books instead of the 300 to 400 a quarter it would have normally cost. Tell your girlfriend to try the same thing. Sometimes you get real lucky other times you have to still get them from the highway robbery book store on campus but you still end up saving a bunch over time.
December 27, 2003 8:41 PM
 

Darrell said:

Go to (http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/). They crawl all the sites for books, including half.com! When she's done with her books for the semester, go to (http://www.booksintocash.com/). They give much better tradein than the college does, which is max 50% but usually more like 5%, and the shipping is FREE. These two sites saved me thousands in my MBA program.

And since the MBA program is full of a bunch of financial nerds, we would watch currency fluctuations and buy from amazon.uk when the dollar was strong. Hehe. Screw the bookstores!
December 29, 2003 1:00 AM
 

Andy said:

That is a super good link! Thanks Darrell I will be using it frequently as I still go to school. It seems like I've been in school forever ( I have to work full time too ) and that PhD is still so far away. *sigh* Someday I will finally get there though, even though I may be 65 by the time it happens.
December 29, 2003 3:47 AM
 

Kori said:

Darrell:

Thanks bunches for the great links. Although I've already committed myself to a number of those outrageously priced textbooks, I can always try to take them straight back to the bookstore if I do manage to find the titles that I need.
December 29, 2003 11:26 PM
 

Josh Baltzell said:

I think there can be value in having a textbook handy, but I can't say a 100% switch to digital even in the Universities with provided laptops is a good idea.

Not only will the university and book companies be unwilling to let the profits from high priced books go, they would be unnable to do so. Look at how music is shared in our universities, just think if all textbooks were digital. One copy of each book would sell nationwide.
December 30, 2003 4:31 PM
 

Anonymous said:

I think a lot of it is people are afraid. They think of a Tablet PC as a gigantic palm pilot and don't realize that it is a normal notebook.

This reminds me of my whole opinion on fossil fuel comsumption. We are too dependant on this non-renewable resource and it will eventually run out. However, odly enough, there are many companie that make their livelyhood from this resource and i feel have no intention of allowing this cash cow to go away anytime soon. It is also expensive to convert (geez.. the money issue).

Where am i going with this? It is the same with technology, people become comfortable and they don't want to change. In my former industry (i resigned yesterday, what a relief) Oil & Gas people are afraid of technology because they are used to doing things the old way and are afraid of change. They think it will remove them from their job (book store people), but as Rory once said, they never think that will do something better.

Well i'm done ranting, bye
May 14, 2004 3:53 PM
 

Chris said:

I think a lot of it is people are afraid. They think of a Tablet PC as a gigantic palm pilot and don't realize that it is a normal notebook.

This reminds me of my whole opinion on fossil fuel comsumption. We are too dependant on this non-renewable resource and it will eventually run out. However, odly enough, there are many companie that make their livelyhood from this resource and i feel have no intention of allowing this cash cow to go away anytime soon. It is also expensive to convert (geez.. the money issue).

Where am i going with this? It is the same with technology, people become comfortable and they don't want to change. In my former industry (i resigned yesterday, what a relief) Oil & Gas people are afraid of technology because they are used to doing things the old way and are afraid of change. They think it will remove them from their job (book store people), but as Rory once said, they never think that will do something better.

Well i'm done ranting, bye
May 14, 2004 3:53 PM
 

Chris said:

The above is mine, i just forgot to put my name to it, sorry.
May 14, 2004 3:53 PM
 

Anonymous said:

March 13, 2006 6:24 PM
 

TrackBack said:

Been blogging for a year - Forgotten why I even started...
April 27, 2004 1:14 AM
 

TrackBack said:

Hey, Scoble - I got your tablet PC love right here
May 12, 2004 11:46 AM
 

TrackBack said:

Link round-up, shout-outs, etc
May 14, 2004 8:34 AM
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