Robots & Magazines
One of those Groupon deals came through to my email account the other day, offering an iPad2 with a Phillips docking station for under a grand. A pretty good deal, even if the tablet discount wasn't where most of the value offered lay.

The iPad doesn't offer much to me: I've got a PC and a wired modem, and I already have a phone (that isn't an iPhone), but one thing I could have by buying an iPad is a reliable subscription to the New Yorker magazine, and for about half the price.

Every week it's a toss-up as to which issue will arrive in my mailbox: the current week's, last week's, maybe one a month old, or none at all. They arrive still in their sealed plastic, so I don't suppose the postman is reading them first, but how I can walk into a new agent's and see the current issue on time and not have received my subscription copy, well, I reckon it's either the distributor or the fact that the newsstand issue is $15 and my subscription would cost them money if they delivered it.

The potential for it to be a problem with the distributor is pretty high. Conde Nast was using Pitney Bowes, and the addressing slip included a "how's my distribution" website link, to which I regularly posted every week, highlighting for them their failures to be timely in delivery. At some point in the last year, a different distributor was chosen, still with a website to report problems to, but the delivery was nearly always on time. My updates to the website warmly congratulated them on their performance. So Conde Nast switched back to Pitney Bowes. And delivery is woeful once again. And there's no website.

If I bought an iPad, there'd be no issue with issues, but I can't really justify the spend for the equipment, although it would be only a matter of years and years before the subscription discount paid for the hardware. Assuming the software, i.e., internet connection for the weekly download, didn't eat that up.

And then there was Sony. They've got a new tablet, due to hit the market soon, and I like the sound of it. It's an Android-based tablet, for one thing, so it would be compatible with my phone, more or less. It's got a USB port, and its memory can be upgraded via SD card. It folds up. Folded halfway and turned horizontally, you get a mini-PC interface, screen on top and "keyboard" down. eBook pages can be presented verso-recto, just like a real book.

And Next Issue Media offer subscriptions to publications from five publishers, including Conde Nast's New Yorker. (The others are Time Inc., from whom you can get Fortune and Time; Meredith, who publish Fitness and Parents, and Hearst, for Esquire and Popular Mechanics; New Corp's in there, too, but not offering anything yet.)

My original dilemma became somewhat more acute when an online auction site started offering iPad's for bids starting at $40, but I like the sound of Sony's tablet, even though I don't give much of a stuff to games and movies and music on it. Since it's not even on offer until later this month, though, I can do some research. Like, how much can it be used to replace my aging laptop? With both 3G and WiFi connectivity, I could go WifFi only with my current internet provider and ignore the 3G calls in favour of my Optus account, maybe. Seems worth waiting for.

Now if the Atlantic Monthly would get on board. . . .