Newspaper suggestions?

[kobokobe]

Hey guys,

I was thinking of subscribing to a newspaper and was looking for some advice. I no longer subscribe to a physical copy so I could definitely use one but it seems a bit expensive. I was considering the NY Times which is more expensive than most (19.99/mo), the washington post which is relatively cheaper (9.99.mo), the globe and mail (14.95/mo) and the national post (14.99/mo).

If anyone can share their experience with any of these papers, or just the Kobo newspaper experience in general, I would greatly appreciate it. I would also like to find out if you guys think if its worth the price tag.

One more thing, on the kobo website the national post has customer rating of 3 out of 5 (used to be worse I think) where others have 4 or 5, does anyone know why it has such bad reviews? (is there something wrong with it on kobo or are people just not liking the paper itself)

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Also curious if anyone subscribes to more than one paper because I prefer the washington post or the new york times but would need the G&M or natl post for Canadian news

[robko]

Personally I like the way Kobo handles newspapers. $15 is only $0.50 a day which is pretty good. I suspect the 3 stars on National Post is personal preference of the reader (I have it and don't see any issues).
They still have 2 week free trial subscriptions so I would try all 3 of your possibilities out and see which one you like. Might want to wait a day as they seem to be having server issues as no one has received their subscription today.

[kobokobe]

Thanks for the reply I was going to get the free trials for all 4, but was scared that I would forget to cancel 3 of them and incur ~$60 of subscription fees for one month.

[The Terminator]

Check out Calibre.

[kobokobe]

I have tried Calibre, but calibre-loaded papers didn't work too well (ex. clicking on headlines), plus I really wanna be able to sync wirelessly, and also have them in the "news & mags" section of the library as opposed to in the "books" section.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

[kobokobe]

Does anybody know if you can continue the rest of your free trial at a later date if you cancel it before the 14-day period is over?

[Latch]

I would doubt it. Why would you want to do that anyway?

[JedV]

Originally Posted by The Terminator

Check out Calibre.

I signed up for the free trial of my local paper, the Vancouver Sun and in my opinion it is not worth paying money for. That's because out of sheer interest, I got Calibre to pull it's version of the paper - and guess what? Most, if not all of the content was identical!

As for getting it onto your Kobo wirelessly, it is surprisingly easy to set up the Calibre content server. Essentially you use the Kobo's web browser to log into your Calibre library. A listing of all of your books is provided, by default sorted by date so your latest newspapers are on top. There's a button for "epub" at each listing, click on it to get your paper/book wirelessly. Calibre can also be set up to fetch news sources every (or selected days) at a set time, hence being a subscription. You can also get it to keep only a set number of "papers"/"magazines", and to automatically delete those that are greater than x days old. Clearly there has been a lot of thought put into this. One drawback - you computer will need to be on, with Calibre open and the content server activated when you want to fetch papers wirelessly.

I encourage you to try both ways and see what works best for you.

[Lordvic]

ya. The subscription service is really cool. the ability to have your papers auto download then read on the go is fantastic

However, the pricing is way off.

Most of the major news papers, especially the Toronto ones, Globe, Star, Sun are free on the internet already. Paying 15 / mth for similar news just to be auto downloaded is too much.

at $5 / mth i'd consider a subscription to a newspaper on it, but not more!

However, if you have Calibre, and don't mind syncing your device before you head out on your own, it can be set to automatically download feeds, news articles and the like into epub format which you can read on your device

There is also a website called InstaPaper (i dont have the URL here at work). that allows you to automatically convert a website from your browser into epub format to download and read on the go

[Mike P]

I subscribe to my local paper (Victoria Times Colonist) and the New York Times and am very pleased with the product. On price, the Times Colonist is $7 less a month than home delivery and I used to receive the Sunday New York Times with my home Globe and Mail subscription for $30/month but now receive it every day on my Kobo for $20/month.

Having checked both hard copy and Kobo versions, you do seem to get virtually all the editorial content (all the stories including the book review and magazine form the NYT), with some minor caveats:

1. No ads (possibly a benefit)
2. No classifieds
3. No crossword
4. No comics
5. No sports tables (though the sports section are complete otherwise)
6. The Victoria paper is available on the Kobo and on the iphone app but the NYT is readable only on the Kobo itself – neither can be read on the Kobo desktop – the reason given for this is that the publisher of the newspapers add these restriction.

I still receive home delivery of the Globe and Mail (it’s a very well laid out paper). I’m interested in the Kobo Vox for its access to Press Display (http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx). A colour 7” tablet might just be what I would like for newspapers and magazines, however I would still use my Kobo Touch for reading books.
One additional note: I did have a Kobo wifi with newspaper subscriptions but when there was a firmware upgrade that included enhanced pagination (Go to page #), it slowed down the ability to load articles and switch between sections in a newspaper considerably. The Kobo Touch does not have this issue at all.

In summary, while I’ve listed a number of things to watch out for, the experience of having my newspapers downloaded to the Kobo for reading anywhere has been very positive.

[kobokobe]

Thanks for all the reviews/suggestions guys.
Overall, the reviews seem quite positive and I've been pretty happy with the trials. I didn't know you could sync wirelessly with Calibre maybe I will give that a try but will probably end up subscribing to one or two.