Times Reader looks slick, but Arrington appears unimpressed

As a UMPC owner and a die-hard eBook and digital magazine reader, I was thrilled to hear about the Times Reader application announced in April. The app for XP and Vista looks to bring the truest reader experience to the computer screen out of everything I've seen so far. Read / Write Web has a nice overview with plenty of screenshots, so check 'em out and tell me if I'm excited about nothing. I like the rendering control the app should have as well as the highlighting and e-mailing of articles.

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch might not be as impressed based on this comment he left at Read / Write Web while quoting the writeup: " [R/W Web:]'Times Reader is an upcoming new application from The New York Times and Microsoft, which lets users read the NY Times electronically using advanced screen reading technology from Microsoft.' [Mike:] Isn't a browser an application that lets users read the NY Times electronically?"

I left my comment to Mike on the original story because I think he's missing a point here. There's no reason to hash it out here; you can see what I said right on the Read / Write Web site. There's also a link to the Times Reader page over at the NYTimes; you can sign up to beta the new reader once it becomes available.

Comments

[Pam]

James,

I'd be interested in your thoughts to the question I posted at the NY Times: How is this different from my ability to download the electronic edition of the NY Times via NewsStand? I do this daily and it works very well. I realize with the Times Reader I could do this for free, but other than that, what are the benefits as you see them? For me, the Times Reader will only be interesting if I can download the full daily paper (or even better, to download particular sections that I read as I do now).

Thanks,

[jk]

I think NewStand is excellent and was wondering the same earlier when I first saw this post. NewStand works with many papers, too.