First, I appreciate the in-person confirmation that Entourage is alive and . . . afloat. It's especially heartening since I expect my shiny new eDGe to arrive on Thu or Fri.

I bet the ranch that my experience showing this thing around campus will be like alex_edge's. The first time I sit down in a committee meeting, fire up the Edge, and start annotating a PDF of the agenda and the procedures we're revising, at least three of the six or seven colleagues in the room are going to try to tackle me and abscond with it. When I show one pal that she can hand write comments on student electronic work without printing it before and scanning it after, she'll go crazy with delight. When I sent my funding request to my young gadget-loving department head and he took a look at the product description, his reaction was, "Holy monkey brains, all this thing needs is a toothbrush."

The execution and marketing may need some work, but regardless of how my Edge ends up performing, this is an inspired idea -- so I hope Entourage can turn things around. But yeah, you need to work on the features that the users in the trenches are clamoring for, and those are probably not the features that most iPad users clamor for. The value system of the real Edge demographic is somewhat different. How many of you, like, me, read the online reviews from the gadgety publications and, when they mentioned the ostensible "cons," mainly thought, "Um, no, that's actually a pro" or "Who cares about that?" Three pounds is heavy? Not compared to my 6 pound laptop or my 14 pound workbag. Smaller is not better if smaller is more fragile, easier to misplace, and harder on one's already overused eyes. And so on.

But then, I'd prefer to pay for a better turntable than receive a free iPod, so consider the source.