Twenty years ago my wife was asked to start reading a broadsheet paper, to keep abreast of ecomonic developments. Since then we've read a couple of papers, normally having them delivered (through the letter box) each morning. We settled on the London Times a long time ago. Until a couple of months ago it was costing us about eight UK pounds per week, for six days. The Sunday Times is a bit like the NY Times, too darned big to read in a day. When it announced the paywall we did the sums and decided that two pounds per week for a soft version was too good an offer. We joined the beta and had it for free for one month, I guess so they could get the glitches worked out by real users. At the end of that month we had yet another offer, one pound for the first month, then the actual payment, via standing order. Usual silly. Advertise it at two pounds per month, then charge you at 104/12 = 8.67 per month. Anyway, couple of niggles but it still made sense. Below are my comments on the paper as it stands today.

The paper can be viewed in one of two forms. Plain web pages, or a Flash view 'as it was printed'. You need to know where to find this view though, it's pretty subtly buried.

'Todays paper' quite simply isn't. I can go to one of the columnists and start reading, only to find out they wrote that weeks ago. Just read carefully the date on the piece before you start reading.

Search facility. I particularly like one of the columnists who writes an endpiece in the Saturday magazine. Search for his name? Nothing. Search for his column title? Nothing. Search for content and you're likely to find it. They don't seem to have got that bit right at all. And no, there is no simple 'sections' listing/toc. They offer a sitemap view for which I've yet to find a use, an enumerated, and dated 'titles' view (items 37 to 50 are dated yesterday? Why?) and the 'as printed' view. None of which I find satisfactory as a means of searching for a section.

You don't want that. For some reason the powers that be have decided that 'we', the customers don't want to see some parts of the paper in the web pages format. E.g. no TV listings - though they are present in the Flash version. Times readers don't watch TV? In print, there was a TV for the week section. Now gone. Is the TV seen as an enemy? An alternataive media? Read this, don't watch TV? Which .. thought that one up? On Saturday there is (in print) a large crossword. Seems we don't want that in the web format. So we gather. A real pig to print out from the Flash version. An accessibility issue too.

Printing. We do the 'puzzles'. Crosswords. Sudoku. They all have a 'print' link which (almost) does what it says. Except they seem not to have worked out how to print the 'killer' Sudoku. I mailed them a few weeks ago but they haven't yet fixed it. Odd that both crosswords are OK to print yet this one isn't? '#fail' is the expression. We prefer to ponder the crosswords throughout the day, rather than hack at it in one go on the computer. Admitted the computer interface does allow for easier erasure, but even so. Customer choice?

An early bug issue was that I needed to sign in each time I wanted to read the paper. Bloody irritating. Now fixed, partly at least, due to quite an avalanche of user complaint.

Basic news access is good. I can browse as I would with the paper in front of me. I prefer (need?) clear print, so setting the print size to my size is a pre-requisite and works with the web view. Being on a 64bit Linux platform, I simply can't view the Flash version. But I am in a minority so I guess they don't care.

Feedback. I was quite amazed when I found out how easy it was to send a message to the Times. They almost encourage it. Not sure how much they listen (see above, failure to print) but they can hear what we say. They have a good spam trap in that I *think* I wouldn't be allowed to feedback without being logged in, so spam would be from a known source that could easily be blocked by killing the account.

Last night their system screwed up badly. When I went to log on it baulked and redirected me to the 'pay here' page. I wondered if it was a 'log in each 1st of the month' as is the case with gmail. Seemed not to be the case. OK again this morning so I guess it was just a glitch.

Response. Occasionally it is slow to respond. Page load time is generally good, even though my connection (ADSL) isn't particularly 'hot'.

All in all I'm generally satisifed. All my niggles are just that, relatively small niggles that they could fix without much effort. Bug me enough and I'll swap to another paper, though probably online. I certainly don't miss dumping a weeks worth of papers into the recycling bin each week.