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From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: books on an optical disk
Message-ID: <1745@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 8 Nov 88 03:40:26 GMT
References: <0XMtqn087E-0A14EYk@andrew.cmu.edu> <344@uceng.UC.EDU> <5772@hoptoad.uucp> <3447@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <5790@hoptoad.uucp> <557@metapsy.UUCP> <13203@andante.UUCP>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 36

In article <13203@andante.UUCP> prem@andante.UUCP (Swami Devanbu) writes:
>When I read a book, I want to curl up in a comfy chair, with a blanket
>around me, a bowl of curried popcorn, and a pot of tea. 
>A computer is a computer and a book is a book. 

I, for one, have hundreds of pounds of !@#$%^ reference manuals. I would
like to throw them off a tall building, but can't because I "might need
them someday". I don't curl up with them, I usually need them when I'm
at the computer and have it powered up.

Optical disks are fantastic for this. Microsoft, to their great credit,
have finally released a CD-ROM with most of their manuals on it. GREAT!
(They forgot to mention the price, though!)

When is Sun going to do this, instead of sending out a crate of manuals
that's bigger than the crate the machine came in?

Other uses for optical disks:
o	Back issues of your favorite mag. You could toss with a clear
	conscience all your back issues of PC-Rag. Pay $30 extra per year,
	and get the annual CD-ROM!
o	The telephone book. Pleeese! It's really hard to do a search on
	it the way it is!
o	Back newspapers. You can't buy them anyway, and newspapers are
	a terrible problem to store.
o	Automobile repair manuals (last time I bought one, it was a foot
	thick! with 6 inches of errata to be inserted!).
o	Parts catalogs (take a look at them in an auto supply house, or
	in an EE house).

The main barriers I see are:
1.	The drives should cost about $200 (like audio CD players). $1000
	just kills it.
2.	The CD itself should cost <= the cost of the paper version. When
	it costs 10 times as much, people stick to the paper.

Let's save some trees!