IP: Newsstand -- a must miss

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

If you look at the top left of the online NY Times , there is an 
advertisement for electronic delivery of the complete times. It is supplied 
by Newsstand and costs $.65 per day. Sounds great , well hold off for a 
while, it is not as good as it sounds.

First the images are HUGH. 30 megs or so. So have a real broadband before 
trying. It is designed to load down at night but twice , out of 2 times, it 
has failed to do so and in the morning when I woke up and prepared to take 
my lap top on the train and read, I would have had to down load at what 
turned out to be about 8 - 35 kBs . That is slow and often it faulted -- 
gtiming out.

If you manage to get it loaded down , you are then faced with an awkward 
interface -- useable but barely.  I tried to print out the NYT cross word 
for my wife and search as I tried I could not see a way to print a 
selection . Without that a page of the NYT reduced to 8x10 is not very easy 
to do a cross word on.

Bottom line, pass on it at this time till either they get their product 
working right and/or someone comes out with a e-delivery that works (hint 
there is one in pre-beta that looks a lot better)

Dave


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