MJ wrote in
:

I, like probably many of you, have way more paper copies of
woodworking magazines than I can possibly read. My collection goes
back to the 1980's, which means 30+ years of Wood, Pop Wood, American
Woodworker, etc. Just keeping things in order is a problem.

I'm thinking of switching over to digital copies over the next renewal
schedules. I've owned digital copies of magazines before and to be
honest, until tablet computers came on the market, it just never seem
easy to use them. With iPads and such, it's easy to bring them to the
shop and be able to review a plan without having to print things out.

I'm curious what the members here think? In addition, I want to "rail
a bit" against the rather exorbitant pricing some of the publishers
have on the digital copies. I understand the wanting to maintain a
profit margin for the effort to produce, but I just don't see why a
digital copy cost the same as a paper copy. I mean isn't there a price
for paper, printer fees, storage, etc?

The model that I like for any of this is Tauton's Fine Woodworking.
For $14.95 (I think) a year, you get access to their entire digital
database of magazines, articles, blogs, etc. I've used this feature
many times and it's just great. I just wish more magazines would
follow.

Thoughts about this?

MJ

I'm not sure I want to invest serious cash in a device to sit on the back
of the toilet. I've got a couple different bathrooms in the house, so
I'd need one for each room. Print subscriptions are cheaper. (Then
there's the whole issue of keeping the batteries charged, being in range
of a wireless connection or distributing files to each device, etc.)

I've got one magazine subscription that keeps on missing issues. Rather
than go digital (I've got access to the digital version and rarely use
it), I'm probably going to drop the entire subscription. I might have to
get some old magazines to read. (Larry Blanchard, did you ever get rid
of those train magazines from like 10 years ago?)

On the other side of the coin, printed magazines can't do anything fancy
like play a video or sound. They also tend to take up quite a bit of
space.

Puckdropper
--
Make it to fit, don't make it fit.