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Ritz · 04-18-2011, 07:03 PM

This is the first time I have taken the time to post as well. I purchased my EE last September and it has absolutely been integral to my success with returning to college. I used to be a very scattered and easily distracted student who also suffered from a minor writing disability. The Edge has helped round out my writing weakness, vastly improved my organization and given me an outlet for my creativity; I do design sketches of architecture, furniture, and mechanical objects.

Being able to contain all of my class notes, home, research and my personal journals all on one device has been a life saver. I am an engineering student so most of my work is a combination of schematics, equations and tabular data. The edge has let me keep up with notes in class, record accurate data real time on PDFs of lab printouts and cleaned up the disaster that was general referred to as my homework.

Nearly every professor and other student I have shown the edge to has been very impressed can immediately see the value of it. What Entourage really needs are advocates and trainers that can go onsite to different tech colleges to both demonstrate and support the two edges. Something along the lines of self motivated field sales and support people. To do that though they need to be able to actually fill orders that have been closed and there would need to be monetary incentive obviously. Perhaps with the mark up of local support contracts enough extra revenue could be created to be worth the salesmen’s time.

For any of this to work though everyone in the field will need to know the device inside and out and having a fist full of apps proven and tested to work with each release. Apps that make the Edge unique, in short being able to input with a stylist on the E-Reader side.

Let’s face it, the tablet side will never match up to the IPad. Apple has way too much tied up in R&D to keep up with them on incremental upgrades. What Entourage needs to do is focus on the “Nintendo Wi quality that the edge has. No one else is attempting to combine both aspects of an E-reader and a tablet.

What first came to mind for me when I originally got the Edge was “wouldn’t this be great if I could just get my text book cheaply from Entourage, and my professor could just assign reading and homework problems and have it tied to a digital syllabus and calendar that I could sync all of my classes to.. The form factor is great for this very purpose. Fully interactive text books could be developed where the lessons are in text that could be read on either the table or E-Reader side. You could insert “book marks where you could write in notes that could be looked at either by clicking on the book mark or by looking at all the notes as a complete document. The homework assignments could be completed on the E-Reader side by clicking on the problem in text and the total assignment could be bundled and sent to the professors Edge for grading.

Unfortunately college text book publishers would need to be on board or Entourage would need to work with specific colleges to publish books for them. The community college I just got my associates degree is very big on charging students as little as possible, both in tuition and in book costs. If the college could sell an edge to each student then and able to sell them all the text books they needed for half the usual cost the edge would quickly pay for itself at 120 dollars a book and save the student over all. Keep in mind that most students at community colleges are barely scraping by so big upfront costs can be a deal breaker.

I am worried though that my idea’s may be too little too late and there is not enough inventory or capital remaining at Entourage to implement any of them not to mention continue the hardware and software R&D that must be done. Primary hardware R&D being minimum of 8 color E-Reader, a 10x18 E-reader only that can blue tooth with the professors Edge to do class notes that can be projected onto a wall and to sync with students Edges. Power consumption, processing power and speed, overall thickness and weight are always directions for constant improvement.

I would not be too surprised if Entourage has not already considered these possibilities and either failed to achieve them or determined they were too far outside of the scope of the company to pursue.

04-18-2011, 07:03 PM	#53
Ritz Edge User	This is the first time I have taken the time to post as well. I purchased my EE last September and it has absolutely been integral to my success with returning to college. I used to be a very scattered and easily distracted student who also suffered from a minor writing disability. The Edge has helped round out my writing weakness, vastly improved my organization and given me an outlet for my creativity; I do design sketches of architecture, furniture, and mechanical objects. Being able to contain all of my class notes, home, research and my personal journals all on one device has been a life saver. I am an engineering student so most of my work is a combination of schematics, equations and tabular data. The edge has let me keep up with notes in class, record accurate data real time on PDFs of lab printouts and cleaned up the disaster that was general referred to as my homework. Nearly every professor and other student I have shown the edge to has been very impressed can immediately see the value of it. What Entourage really needs are advocates and trainers that can go onsite to different tech colleges to both demonstrate and support the two edges. Something along the lines of self motivated field sales and support people. To do that though they need to be able to actually fill orders that have been closed and there would need to be monetary incentive obviously. Perhaps with the mark up of local support contracts enough extra revenue could be created to be worth the salesmen’s time. For any of this to work though everyone in the field will need to know the device inside and out and having a fist full of apps proven and tested to work with each release. Apps that make the Edge unique, in short being able to input with a stylist on the E-Reader side. Let’s face it, the tablet side will never match up to the IPad. Apple has way too much tied up in R&D to keep up with them on incremental upgrades. What Entourage needs to do is focus on the “Nintendo Wi quality that the edge has. No one else is attempting to combine both aspects of an E-reader and a tablet. What first came to mind for me when I originally got the Edge was “wouldn’t this be great if I could just get my text book cheaply from Entourage, and my professor could just assign reading and homework problems and have it tied to a digital syllabus and calendar that I could sync all of my classes to.. The form factor is great for this very purpose. Fully interactive text books could be developed where the lessons are in text that could be read on either the table or E-Reader side. You could insert “book marks where you could write in notes that could be looked at either by clicking on the book mark or by looking at all the notes as a complete document. The homework assignments could be completed on the E-Reader side by clicking on the problem in text and the total assignment could be bundled and sent to the professors Edge for grading. Unfortunately college text book publishers would need to be on board or Entourage would need to work with specific colleges to publish books for them. The community college I just got my associates degree is very big on charging students as little as possible, both in tuition and in book costs. If the college could sell an edge to each student then and able to sell them all the text books they needed for half the usual cost the edge would quickly pay for itself at 120 dollars a book and save the student over all. Keep in mind that most students at community colleges are barely scraping by so big upfront costs can be a deal breaker. I am worried though that my idea’s may be too little too late and there is not enough inventory or capital remaining at Entourage to implement any of them not to mention continue the hardware and software R&D that must be done. Primary hardware R&D being minimum of 8 color E-Reader, a 10x18 E-reader only that can blue tooth with the professors Edge to do class notes that can be projected onto a wall and to sync with students Edges. Power consumption, processing power and speed, overall thickness and weight are always directions for constant improvement. I would not be too surprised if Entourage has not already considered these possibilities and either failed to achieve them or determined they were too far outside of the scope of the company to pursue.