Archive for August 20th, 2007

It’s great to belong to something, whether it’s a social organization, book club, or team at work.  You know that the group is there for you and you are there for your fellow members.  That’s the same feeling you get when you join a forum.  At the beginning you do get more than you give as a newbie, but little by little that changes as you learn and grow.  Many of us don’t join right away; instead we lurk for weeks, months, even years.  I do it and I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s the fear of being ignored, saying the wrong thing, asking dumb questions, or feeling that I have nothing to offer.  The thing is, there are no dumb questions, people are rarely just ignored, and everyone does have something to offer.  When I first got into e-books, I felt like the Lone Ranger.  Everyone I told about my Rocket e-book looked at me like I had horns on my head.  Then one day I came across some groups on Yahoo!  Finally, people who shared my interests!  I had to become a member in order to see the messages, but I was still a lurker.  Then finally I took the plunge. Until the move is made to join and be a member of a user group forum, you are not really getting the full benefits.  Those benefits include discussing something that you are interested in with others around-the-world that have the same enthusiasm. I found that the more I tried to participate, the more I learned, and consequently the more I enjoyed using my Rocket e-book.  I now call tech support as a last resort.  The last time I called tech support for one of PDAs,  the tech guy suggested that I go online to a Palm forum to find a solution.  In fact, I am starting to see various forums listed in some support sites’ knowledge base.  It’s a compliment, but at the same time, manufacturers are getting away with having others do their work for them.  I hope that in the cases that they refer customers to user groups that they are at least compensating the forums.  It’s not cheap to maintain a web site and it is time consuming.

Sadly, many of the groups I belong to have slowed down.  It seems that the only traffic is from spammers.  I know that the legacy devices are in decline, and many of us have moved on to the newer reading devices.  I wonder how long the groups will stay available.  Just in case, I have started reading through the archives to glean the important tips and saving them to my computer.  I have also started downloading the various files that are kept.  This will become a part of my regular backup routine, simply because I don’t want to ever lose the great info I have found in the past seven years.

Now that I am on the subject of user forums, I’d like to take this time to say thank-you to everyone that is a member of the groups I belong to.  Without the help, patience, and knowledge of fellow members, I know that I would have put my e-book device in a box, never to see the light of day.  Truly you are lifesavers.