E-books
It is true that slowly but surely the move to e-books is coming. I rarely buy the Sunday papers now, preferring to catch up with the best articles at Arts and Letters Daily, and when I went to Iceland earlier in the year, the web was more up-to-date and cheaper than buying a travel book.

Where I perhaps disagree is in the move towards an e-literature, ie fiction. It is worth remembering that a paperback is actually a far more advanced storage device than most electronic equivalents: it is portable, cheap, widely available, robust, easily searchable (with a finger!) and even easier to bookmark (turning over the corner of a page).

The move to e-literature will, I think, require a 'killer app' - a kind of literature that is more suitable to being read on the screen than on paper, rather than the next Stephen King.

Writers like David Eggars, Ben Marcus and Harmony Korine seem somewhat constrained by the page, and will possibly be liberated by electronic means.

Similarly, my own story, I Am No One, can be read either in the order that I wrote it as you would on the page, or one decided by the reader.

Because the experience of reading from a screen is different from a page, it seems likely that successful e-literature will exalt in this difference, not merely repeat what is already there.
Adrian Slatcher
Manchester

Thanks for the mention and the picture in the article. It was the most comprehensive survey of available e-book technology yet published in the press.

I'd like to correct one error. I was not the founder of Online Originals. It was founded by David Gettman in 1996, I took over as managing director this year.
Phil Rance
philrance@onlineoriginals.com

Not quite dead
As a mainframe contractor with more than 16 years experience, I was distressed to read the opening line of a Jack Schofield article last week: "Since the death of the mainframe in the 1980's..."

I can only imagine the mortification that this revelation must be causing to the heads of IT departments the world over, since just about every large company on the planet has obviously been wasting its money maintaining what amount to incredibly expensive mausoleums for the last 15 years or so.

It's almost enough to make me feel the odd pang of guilt as I sign my next contract.
Tom Booth
thomas.booth@lloydstsb.co.uk

Rallying call
I have just stumbled across a site that could provide a rallying point for all of us who are keen to see a rational, fair-priced system of access and use of the internet.

www.08whatever.com is brilliantly designed, with clear comparisons of all the internet service providers (ISPs) and, perhaps most importantly, users' comments. I urge all the readers of Online to enter their experiences on this site, for the benefit of all. I speak as one whose fingers were burned by late signing to EzeSurf. We will prevail!
Constantine de Goguel
congee1@hotmail.com

Reader needed
It is correct that CD-RW discs can be read by drives with the relevant specification. However, for these drives to transfer data, files etc to the computer system, you need to install a UDF reader.

Udfrinst.exe can be downloaded from Adaptec's website, which has more info about the different versions of the file and the CD-rom drives that have been tested.
Ron Loewenbein
Ron@loewenbein.worldonline.co.uk

Freeserve
May I echo Richard Page's problems with Freeserve Unlimited. I returned from a week's holiday on September 29 to find that connection to this service was impossible at any time and has subsequently remained so.

Telephone calls and a letter eventually elicited the information that there were indeed problems and that work was taking place to improve capacity in areas of high usage.

However, to date (October 14), I am still able to make a connection only by using the original Freeserve dialling code, thus effectively paying twice for the same service.

Having emailed the billing department separately to express my dissatisfaction, I received a prompt reply asking me if I wanted to close my account.

One has to wonder whether Freeserve still wishes to continue with its Unlimited service.
Tony Buckle
am@buckle61.freeserve.co.uk

After the promise of "unlimited free access to the internet", I signed up for Freeserve Offpeak Surftime.

My advice to anybody else is don't bother. After experiencing similar problems to Richard Page, ie the line being engaged most of the time, not being able to upload because of low speeds of 6-9cps and continuously being bumped off after two hours, I feel this is not delivering what the adverts say.

It is about time trading standards stepped in - after all, Freeserve is advertising a service it can't deliver.

BT should also be held responsible for this farce because you can't get the service unless you use an ISP on the BT list.

If it doesn't deliver, you should be able to cancel within normal contract periods - around 28 days.
Bernard Harper
bernard@norfolkpark.freeserve.co.uk