Letters to Redmond

In Defense of Print

According to readers, rumors of old media's death have been widlly exaggerated.

• By Readers of Redmond magazine
• 02/01/2010

In Defense of Print
In his final column of 2009 ("TechNet Magazine Makes News," December 2009), Doug Barney asked readers: "Do you still love print, or are magazines living on borrowed time?" Here, several readers respond.

I've been reading Redmond for a while now, and I'm extremely glad you're still printing hard copy. Though I enjoy technology,

I prefer to open a book or magazine in front of me rather than reading from a screen. Besides the lack of "flicker and electromagnetic emissions," print has less noise on the page, like flashy ads or scads of hyperlinks -- not to mention information overload. The printed page requires a concise and clever vocabulary that's being lost in the world of online communications.

There certainly is a place for Web-based news outlets, but for this purpose, I prefer ink and paper.

Dan Yatzeck
Brookfield, Wis.

I receive a ton of e-mails and other digital information about the IT world every day. But I still like to have the paper magazines to take with me to read when and where it's convenient.

Fred Hawthorne
Charlottesville, Va.

I can't agree with Barney more, and I'm very happy that printed magazines are alive. I enjoy reading crisp, clean type on a nice white page with no flicker.

Frank Cappa
received by e-mail

While it's obvious that demand for print is declining, my enjoyment and desire for print will only grow. In fact, as a computer professional I tire of electronic screens and TV. If I had my druthers I'd be reading PC Mag, Network World, Info World and the local newspaper daily. It's sad to see the print business declining.

Jim Kiker
received by e-mail

Funny thing is, I read Barney's column in the magazine at the gym -- in the sauna. Can't do that with a laptop.

I hope paper is still the way to go. Reading a magazine is still the best way to get information; I can decide what I want to read in print form faster than I can online.

Ray Zima
received by e-mail

I like reading in print. Computers are for work. When I moved to different anti-virus supplier, I was guided by print ads.

Keep up the good work: We're reading in print, not online.

Elias Thienpont
Richardton, N.D.

Another Point of View
I had to laugh at Barney's opening paragraph about reading crisp, clean type -- I was reading his column on my monitor after I downloaded the recent edition of Redmond. Too funny!

I have to agree with Barney, however, that there are times when print still feels good. There is gratification in turning pages, and in knowing when "done" is coming by feeling the pages in the right hand getting thinner and thinner.

On the other hand, using a PDF reader that has word-search capabilities makes finding information easy. And bookmarks work much better than dog-earing a page that somehow magically rights itself after months on the shelf.

With a PDF download of a magazine, you have the option of mobile reading. I can put PDFs I've downloaded on my Sony eReader and take them with me for the bus ride home. I like this more than visiting a magazine's Web site for updated content. Having a million things to do at work each day makes it tough to visit a site to find things that I might have missed. After all, how long do feature articles stay on the first page before they are relegated to the search archives?

Mark Kraska
received by e-mail