Forbes Magazine

I've been a subscriber to Forbes magazine for over a year now and I can honestly say it's worth the investment. Even with its quality content, it is lacking in a couple of areas.

Great Business Content
If you have any interest in the US market, you need to know what's going on before it's too late. You don't want to figure out that tech stocks aren't worth a dime the day after they're their worth nine cents. Forbes provides an excellent perspective of the landscape of business. It really earns its marks in showing briefs of what new types of technologies are being developed, what troubles certain companies are facing, and what has caused other companies to fail in the past. This is actual *knowledge* that you begin to develop. Usually, you have to do case studies in business school to develop this type of knowledge. Whereas you won't have the insight of an MBA, you'll definately be in the game.

Sometimes a little too much satire
Some of the articles, however, are a little pushy. In a recent issue, Forbes featured an article on Larry Ellison, the CEO and founder of Oracle. It painted the picture of him (and Oracle) as bully - to much of one for the good of himself or his company. They show his mistakes and weaknesses over the years. While there are some insights to take from this type of an article (I'm developing a clear picture of why jerks seem to have the most influence in certain companies) it's a little less informational than, say, a case study of what's going wrong with a given business - like what really made Webvan fail (as done by the Insdustry Standard in one of it's last editions).

A day late and a dollar short
What I don't like about Forbes is that I always get it about a week after it's out on bookstore shelves. I inquired about this fact, I received a reply stating that the company sends out subscriber editions after the bookstore editions. Is this fair? Why am I making a committment to this company if I can't even receive fast receival of my goods? I need to know what's going on NOW - before my stocks go down again. A week later is too late. I've even heard articles sited on the radio that are in the latest issue which I hadn't yet received. I'm not happy about this and I hope that they change this policy in the future.


I'm pretty serious about my finances and my information. Whereas Forbes contains a wide-variety of information on American business, the *company* doesn't necessarily provide me the best service to make this content timely and relavent for me. Shortcomings aside, it's well worth the $60/yr investment.