Dialogues /monologues:
　　1. Are you being attended to, Miss?
　　翻譯為：小姐，有人在為您服務嗎?在商場、飯店中，to attend to sb.的意思是，招呼、照顧、協助某位顧客。
　　這句話用主動語氣可以說成：Is anybody attending to you, Miss?
　　2. You may divide cyber retailers into three subsets and attack each with a different strategy.
　　翻譯為：您可以將網上零售商分成三個子類，用不同的戰略對付他們。
　　注意的詞語：divide into：分成
　　練習:
　　Buying computer and software
　　At first, I was reluctant to buy computer products completely online. Many of the online computer stores used to sell exclusively through printed catalogs, addressing the technically astute. I found those printed catalogs intimidating and confusing. And preferred to go to a physical store, where knowledgeable sales people could guide me through the maze of choices, explaining the benefits and risks and costs.
　　When egghead, the prominent software retailer, closed its physical stores and decided to operate solely online, I was shocked and disappointed, as I had shopped hardware or software regularly at the local egghead store and depended on expertise, judgment and advice from their sales people. Also, I greatly valued the fact that when I brought new add-ons or upgrades for my PC, I could pay to have them installed on the spot. But now I was forced to learn more about computers than I ever expected to learn. As it turns out, that’s probably a good thing for me and for my budget.
　　Today, the computer industry is a commodity, standards-driven marketplace. Computer “manufactures” are really just assembles. They buy processors from one, software, disks, memories, from other sources, and assemble them into systems. The competition is fierce and the profit margins are slim. In terms of the basic specs—speed, memory, and storage—what we now define as a “complete system” for home use would have made a wealthy technical guru tremble with jealousy ten years ago.
　　Fifteen years ago, is seemed inconceivable that an ordinary individual would ever need a 100 MHZ machine with 1 gigabyte of disk storage space. Yet, with the predictable improvement of technology, the speed of commercially available processors doubles about every 18 months according to a rule of thumb (known as “Moore’s law”). While at some point, technology must meet barriers that will slow the pace of change, the computer industry has been adapting at this incredibly rapid rate for more than two decades now, with great regularity. And the software industry has been keeping in lock step with these hardware developments by making each new version of the common applications that people depend upon more and more complex and bulky, requesting the full capacity of the latest and greatest hardware. I believe this software inflation results from the consequences of human nature—software expands to fill the capacity available for it.
　　Basically, “Moore’s law” plus software inflation mean today’s computer system will not last. And the new versions of software will make your equipment painfully slow in two years, and obsolete in four. To stay compatible with other people with whom you have to share files, you should invest time learning about these add-ons gadgets, etc. to upgrade your system. Thus you can make full use of the shopping resources on the Internet, and save again and again.
　　參考譯文:
　　購買電腦和軟件
　　剛開始的時候，我不太情愿完全依靠網絡購買電腦產品。許多網上電腦商店過去主要靠打出來的產品目錄進行銷售，上面清楚地寫明了技術需求。但是我總認為那樣的產品目錄看起來讓人感覺有些發怵而且稀里糊涂的，所以我還是偏愛實體商店，因為那里有精通業務的銷售人員，他們能指引我走出迷宮做出選擇，他們還能向我解釋產品的優點、風險性和成本。
　　當著名的軟件銷售商Egghead關閉實體店鋪，決定只走網絡運營路線的時候我感覺震驚和失望。因為我總是定期到Egghead在當地的實體店鋪去購買軟件和硬件，仰仗那里的銷售人員的專業技能、判斷力和經驗。還有一點讓我非?？粗氐氖牵好慨斘屹徺I新的附加軟件或是將我的個人電腦升級時，我只需付些費用就可以讓他們在現場給我安裝完畢。但是現在我卻被迫去了解更多的電腦知識，而我以前是不需要了解這么多的。但是后來發現，這或許對我來說是件好事，而且節省了我的預算。
　　今天，計算機產業是一種商品，是一個以標準為市場導向的市場。計算機“制造者”們實際上只不過是組裝者。他們從某個渠道購買處理器，從其它渠道購買軟件、光盤和內存，然后將它們組裝成系統。競爭是激烈的，利潤空間也不大。從最基本的配置——速度、內存和硬盤空間——來講，我們現在所定義的家用“全套系統”足以讓十年前富有的技術權威羨慕地發顫不可。
　　15年以前，似乎難以想象一個普通人會需要100兆的機器和十億字節的磁盤存儲空間。然而，隨著可以預見的技術進步，僅憑經驗(被稱為“摩爾定律”)就可以推知：商用存儲器的速度每隔18個月就會成倍增長。然而，技術必定會在某個時候遇上某種障礙，使其減緩變化的步伐。計算機產業在最近二十年來，一直處于令人難以置信的發展速度，到現在已經穩步發展了。軟件產業一直與硬件發展保持著齊肩并進的態勢，人們最常用的應用軟件的更新版本愈發復雜與寵大，只有用最新及功能最強大的硬件才能操作使用。我認為軟件企業的這種膨脹源于人類的天性——軟件需要擴展以充分利用已有的空間。
　　從根本上來講，“摩爾”定律加上軟件膨脹就意味著當今的計算機系統不會維持長久。更新的軟件版本會在兩年內使你的裝備顯得速度極慢，四年以后就該淘汰了。為了與和你共享文件的其他人步調保持一致，你需要花些時間了解這些附加軟件、小工具等，以便將你的計算機系統升級。因此，你可以充分利用網上購物資源，一遍又一遍地反復保存更新軟件和工具。