Blogs Thoughts On Digital Magazines

Uh, I read my iPad on the john constantly.

 

Welll, it was a gift for someone "wanting to try and show pictures to clients"... and it was too expensive for that.

I admit the iPad is probably better suited for this application though.
(depending on the business you're in, it may be too flashy though, handing people pictures of your work on a 600-700$ gadget may or may not work depending on the clients)

 

Can too!

 

I'm of a similar stripe, only occasionally picking up hard copies.

However I wouldn't even accept a "free" e-mag if it included DRM which Zinio does. I have paper magazines from 10-20 years back that I like to look at occasionally and the chances of being able to do the same with any DRMed e-content 10-20 years from now looks to be next to zero. If you change your e-reader hardware regularly (say every 2 years) and the DRM only allows 3 downloads/installs (Zinio rather cleverly skirt around this by only talking about "viewings") then that imposes a 6 year artificial lifespan - less if you use multiple devices or the distributor closes down.

Another downside is limited hardware support (Zinio offline supports Windows and MacOS with an initial release for iPad/Phone) - using a "standard" format like PDF would allow almost any hardware device (even a crusty Psion 5 or netBook) to view their content.

 

I wonder if you would be able to strip the DRM of the stuff you paid for once you download it? That's what I will do with my Kindle books if there's ever even a hint that it will stop me from using the content.

 

Both my wife and I (We're both gadget and gamer geeks) scoffed at the iPad when it came out along with the half the internet that doesn't like their tech fruit flavoured. However since our laptop died we've missed the sofa based browsing that a laptop provided. Sure we both have our smart phones, (iPhone 3GS for her, HTC Desire for me) which gets us through the day, but when sitting back on the sofa of an evening a more generous screen size would be most welcome.
And so we had to u-turn on our initial thoughts and are now planning on picking up an Android tablet as soon as one that meets our needs comes along. The Samsung Tab is too small for our needs, more oversized phone than a tablet IMO. However the Archos 101 has our attentions at present with it's rather favourable £250 price point so we could see that in our household come the new year.
At such a point I can imagine these e-Mags would be a welcome addition to our lives, although as i'm also hoping to receive a Kindle it will be interesting to compare the long term viewing of LCD vs e-Ink. Of course what you are talking about are applications that provide more than just words and so would be beyond the capabilities of e-Ink, even the coloured kind however at this point i still have my doubt of looking at a tablet screen for the length of time a magazine takes to read, let along books.