Travel Technology - How to read magazines and newspapers on a plane?

Say I want to read some periodicals on my laptop when I'm not connected to the internet. Ones that particularly interest me would be Wall St Journal, The Economist, Harper's, etc.

I would prefer not to have to buy them in paper form. I am willing to pay for this service.

AvantGo used to do something like this, but only for summaries of a few periodicals. I could get a crawler program, but that's a bit too complicated. Ideally, I'd like something that downloads articles the same way it downloads email, and lets me read them at my leisure. Sounds simple, doesn't it? (Maybe this would involve RSS?)

Any suggestions?

hit up a library, preferably a large metro or univ one, those tend to have electronic subscriptions, although some may be delayed by a few mos.

Check out Newsstand.com.

I get the NY Times and International Herald Tribune electronically through them... so far, no problems. The downside is when I don't connect to the net for a few days a bunch of downloads are waiting for me. Of course, I paid for it, so I might as well get it.

Pynch, are you asking if there is a way, for example, to easily download the current issue of, say, The Atlantic Monthy (that fetches all the sub-pages and articles)?

If so, I'd like to know too!

Peetah, thanks. I've seen that service. However, I find two major problems with it. First, it doesn't have the publications in which I'm most interested (mostly The Economist). Second, I'd much prefer a plain text electronic version, rather than a scan of the paper version. I wish I could get it by RSS, or maybe I'll just have to set up a crawler program (unless the publications' websites somehow block automated browsers?).

Cblaisd, yes, that's exactly what I'm asking. I did check for you, and newsstand.com doesn't have Maxim.

For periodicals where the online version is a mirror of the paper version, you could use the "offline favorite" feature in IE.

Favorites > |right-click link| > Make available offline

Follow the wizard to syncing options and pages deep to go within the site.

Peetah, thanks. I've seen that service. However, I find two major problems with it. First, it doesn't have the publications in which I'm most interested (mostly The Economist). Second, I'd much prefer a plain text electronic version, rather than a scan of the paper version. I wish I could get it by RSS, or maybe I'll just have to set up a crawler program (unless the publications' websites somehow block automated browsers?).

Cblaisd, yes, that's exactly what I'm asking. I did check for you, and newsstand.com doesn't have Maxim.

http://www.httrack.com/

It can pretend it is a normal browser, and can even do logins for you on paid websites.

If only Granta had something like this. :cool:

zinio.com - I don't use it but was sitting next to a guy one day that was. Works pretty fluidly and looks good.

Scott, I will try the crawler. Thank you for being so helpful, and so masculine.

SNA_Flyer, yes, but I'm not interested in Red Herring and Kiteworld. The service looks good, but it doesn't have any of the magazines I want.

Morrissey, I see that your two years at Fresno State weren't for naught. :-:

zinio.com - I don't use it but was sitting next to a guy one day that was. Works pretty fluidly and looks good.

I had a Zinio subscription for several years (just let it lapse, in fact) and really liked the interface. It was perfect to use to read my magazines on the bus; on a plane would be even better.

I'm not positive, but isn't there a Firefox extension that does something like this? Downloads content for offline reading?