Zinio
Posted June 9th, 2003 @ 11:25am by Erik J. Barzeski
Judi really likes Zinio, but after trying out the demo, I quickly deleted it from my hard disk. Why?
- You have to lug your PowerBook/iBook just to read a magazine instead of, well, just a magazine.
- You can't pass along a Zinio magazine to a friend like you can a real magazine.
- Screen glare? Don't get that much off of printed pages.
- Magazines have no battery life.
- Magazines don't require the "latest version" of something (or an Internet connection) to be readable.
I could list more, but frankly, I've got other things to do. Like make sure every last trace of Zinio is gone from my computer.
Donate Life
Posted 15 Jun 2003 at 4:35pm #
It depends on the magazine. I wouldn't want to read say, People Magazine, via Zinio. If I'm reading People I'm in "escape" mode and what I'm escaping from is the computer. But I still think MacWorld is the perfect magazine for digital delivery and there are others that would work well too. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Posted 13 Aug 2003 at 10:20pm #
I've seen an alternative to Zinio - Network Computing is sending a nice, high quality magazine that works on the web. And it does not require any application -- or plug-in (that I can tell.) It's fast. It appears to be coming from a company called "Texterity". In any event, I like the fact that I can view it from any PC I have (home or work), and pick up where I left off.
Posted 19 Sep 2003 at 11:58am #
well, there's also the problem, that some pc-magazines were delivered with compact discs. how do i get these discs with the digital version of the magazines???
one cannot download the whole content of cds, i think...
Posted 23 Sep 2003 at 10:38pm #
Let's see, you have to enable cookie's (bad enough), enable javascript (even worse), and also active X ! What the heck does this reader want to do? I'm sorry, I don't feel compelled to support a proprietary software reader system that makes me open my system to high security risks.
Posted 07 Nov 2003 at 10:06am #
I've previously mentioned Zinio on this blog, and its shortcomings, but as I read through my free copy of Mac Developer Journal, I'm appalled by...
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 5:27pm #
I can understand the attraction that paper-based magazines have: they're made from trees, use harsh chemical inks, are shipped over roads by smelly trucks burning fossil fuels and then go straight into the trash!
In my view Zinio, or something like it, is the future of the magazine biz. They have a lot of guts for trying to bring something like this to a skeptical world.
Posted 29 Jan 2004 at 1:16pm #
This nasty little application won't go away! I tried disabling it, removing it from the start menu and System Tray, but it kept reinstalling itself. I uninstalled it, but it still left traces in the registry and in the Program Files / Common Files.
Regedit and several reboots finally cleared everything up. As far as I'm concerned, this is a badly behaved piece of software. Who knows what else it was doing to my system?
Posted 27 Apr 2006 at 2:43pm #
Zinio works for people not used to the digital/internet world. The tray system thing is a mess (it downloads all magazines even if you do not want them for some reason), you have to enable cookie's (bad enough), enable javascript (even worse), and also active X!!! i am sure it generates a lot of security issues (just to get a simple mag???) i have also looked at some other systems and have problems too, except for something called concayo, which is as far as i can see a good option (all digital magazines/books are in spanish tough). The instalation is clean, the website is easy to follow and no mess when you suscribe (they have some free magz too). Ipagez looks cool too, but sometimes it takes forever to see a single issue (quality is kind of ok, and you have to be online to read it!)
Posted 04 Oct 2007 at 8:40am #
I'm a Zinio user through which I subscribe to ten digital magazine editions and I'm quite happy with it. I'm not paranoid about security, but I'm almost paranoid about saving the environment and Zinio is the green way to go in this regard... I'm not saying that I wouldn't use another product other than Zinio if it proved to serve me even better (as in having more publications that I'd like to subsribe to), but for now I don't know of a better alternative... If anyone knows of something similar or better that I can try out, please give me a heads-up... Thanks.