Many of you have been reading the online edition of Microprocessor Report
since we started publishing to the Web in January 2000. Now it's time to take
another big step in our electronic evolution: We're going to open online forums
where our customers and analysts can exchange messages discussing newsletter
articles, content from our conferences, and related topics. If you're a newsletter
subscriber or recent conference attendee, you'll soon receive a separate communication
describing how to join our online forum.
We're just testing the waters for now, seeing if these message boards generate enough customer interest to justify continuing them. They represent a significant investment in time and effort, because our analysts will be responsible for moderating and participating in what could be a fairly busy service. We'll keep the new forum going for at least six months, then collect feedback and decide where to go from there. We may eventually expand the service to include the readers of our free Microprocessor Watch and Embedded Processor Watch email newsletters or subscribers to In-Stat/MDR report services such as the Intel Microprocessors service. We may also schedule live online chats with invited guests, but that's probably well in the future.
The online forum is just another part of our ongoing efforts to make our services more valuable to our customers. Earlier this year, we increased the price of Microprocessor Report subscriptions—a difficult decision in difficult economic times, to be sure. Since last year, we've also increased the average number of newsletter pages per month by about 25%. You may recall our recent 64-page February and March issues, our largest ever. We're covering more products from more companies, but we're maintaining our tight focus on microprocessor technology.
The time is right to add an online forum. After several years of declining diversity in high-end microprocessor architectures, we're seeing signs of new life in this field. There have been plenty of new "extreme" processors for embedded systems, particularly in the areas of multimedia and networking, but now some of the architectural advances embodied in these special-purpose chips are being incorporated into new general-purpose microprocessors. Our industry is not converging to just a few distinct product families—it's opening up to a much wider range of solutions.
We believe the best way to help you understand these alternatives is to help you discuss them with us, and with each other. We know most of you will spend more time reading the discussions than contributing to them; that's the way all good discussions work. You'll benefit from our discussions, even if you don't read them at all, because they'll help us shape our coverage of new products in Microprocessor Report and at our conferences.
Some of you may be familiar with Usenet discussion forums such as the comp.arch hierarchy for computer architecture or the message boards on various PC-enthusiast Web sites. We think we can deliver unique value in this market by having a more-qualified customer base and more-careful moderation of ongoing discussions.
The best way to encourage us to continue the online forum is to participate in it. Some of you won't be able to contribute to discussions in your line of work because of confidentiality concerns, and that's okay. Perhaps you'll have comments in other areas instead.
We're excited about this opportunity to interact with you on a more frequent
basis, and we're looking forward to seeing how it develops. We hope to see you
online soon.
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