Picture Says It All
The cover art on your Oct. 20 issue was amazing. It could have carried the entire issue on its own even if there hadn't been any great articles inside the magazine. I think I'll frame that cover since it stands alone in describing our struggle as a country trying to figure out our economic future.

When I went to college in the early '80s, we were taught that America was moving from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. So what's left for us as a nation if we're neither a manufacturing nor a service country?
Elisabeth Reisch
President, Electra PRC, San Diego

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Offshore Overkill
After seeing the cover of the Oct. 20 issue, it dawned on me that I've been reading about offshore outsourcing in InformationWeek all summer. Though it's a topic of concern to many IT and IS professionals, I wonder if InformationWeek is not protesting too loudly. IT and IS folks need advocates, but unless I'm wrong, InformationWeek doesn't have a large offshore reader- ship, and the focus on outsourcing could possibly be explained by self-interest.

Keep us informed, but don't toot political horns at the expense of the technical and business reporting you do best.
James Bay
Senior Programmer/Analyst, NEBS, Groton, Mass.

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Not A Cost-Saver
I have two major issues with multifunction devices ("Fewer Devices Add Up To Savings"). The first is the life cycle. The life cycle of a multifunction device will be the length of time of the shortest-lived component. Traditional photocopiers can live 10 years or more; a printer, maybe three to five. And while photocopy technology is fairly mature and doesn't change a lot, there's constant innovation and improvement in both printing engines and scanning engines, which will leave your expensive multifunction device either gathering dust or needing replacement every three or so years.

The second is a support issue. Traditional printing is old technology, and the PC architecture supports it natively. Whether you plug it into a parallel port or onto an IP-based network, it works. Multifunction devices, on the other hand, need software shims and drivers to capture the various data streams into virtual faxes, printers, etc.

As an IT manager for a small company, the couple of multifunction devices that are in use cost me more in user support than all of the Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark single-purpose printing devices on my network combined.
Elliot Ross
Network Manager, Provance Technologies, Gatineau, Quebec

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Corrections

The chart accompanying "Tech Companies Tiptoe Back Into The IPO Market" (Nov. 10) should have read: SigmaTel, IPO in September, year-to-date return of 93.0%; FormFactor, June, 85.7%; Digital Theater Sys., July, 69.7%; iPayment, May, 46.4%; iPass, July, 33.1%.

"Rethinking IT Financing" (Government Enterprise, Winter 2003) should have said that Massachusetts' new E-procurement system will comply with Americans with Disabilities Act rules regarding Web-based interfaces and documents generated through templates.

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