So, I have a lot of incentive to like the NYT on the Kindle.

After three days, I’m still not sure if I do.

On the plus side, my biggest worry before my Kindle arrived turns out to be a non-starter. I wondered how I’d take to reading the news on a screen only a few paragraphs big. As promised, this is not an issue. After a very short time, you don’t really notice the paging any more than you notice turning the page of a book, or moving your eyes to the next column. I’ve read a whole novel without any annoyance, and actually find the comfortably sized Kindle less of a hassle than a broadsheet newspaper. (My SO is looking forward to no more piles of old newspapers on the kitchen table, even if that means our 13 yo won’t be reading the paper any more.)

Also, I find I really don’t miss the experience of flipping through the paper, looking for those interesting stories that didn’t make the front page. You can browse section by section, and paging through a section a story at a time is really not bad.

You can store a lot of days worth of news in a stock Kindle, and can search them all quickly; you can store even more if you add a cheap SD card. In the unlikely event that the Times uses a word you don’t know, you can quickly look it up with the Kindle’s great search feature.

On the minus side, comparing my print edition to the Kindle edition, I can see that the print edition includes stories that the Kindle edition does not. I’m really not sure quite what to make of this: so far, at least, I’m actually reading more of the paper than I used to, because I can carry my Kindle to work and read articles in dead time. It’s hard to know how to balance not even seeing some stories vs reading a lot more of them. (I do know that I really miss the Market Gauges pages even if, realistically, I only look at them a few times a month.)

A less ambiguous minus is the pictures, which (to use a technical term) really suck. They’re hard to make out, and there’s a max of one per story, no matter how many there are in the print version. Even worse, many of the pictures and – so far as I can see – ALL the charts and graphs are omitted. This hurts business coverage; I haven’t seen a Science Section yet, but I imagine this will be really painful.

So. Convenience, greenness, and economics vs the loss of maybe 15% of the content. This is a hard call, for me, and I sure wish the NYT would make it easier by including the missing content.

NY Times recently made significant improvements to their avantgo edition, so it includes all the major sections of the paper. The articles are all text, no ads, and interestingly on the PDA the pictures are quite good and in color(!). But…although the main articles are included, many are not because of the format, space, whatever. Bottom line, there are still enough articles that I run out of time before I run out of articles. The only drawback (for me) is that the PDA form factor, while great for travel, is a little space-challenged. Nevertheless, as I mentioned, it’s my ‘gold standard’ for electronic editions since I don’t want to carry my laptop everywhere. And the avantgo service is free.

So I was pretty excited to compare the Kindle subscription edition with what I’ve been using. To cut to the chase I’m happy to report that, for me, the Kindle edition is far superior. There are many more articles, improved navigation and of course the form factor! I was overwhelmed with the Sunday edition which has the magazine and book reviews in addition to the regular news. All-in-all a great offering.

Now about the price of the subscription. I thought it was too high until I went and looked at the alternative offerings. Turns out it’s half the price of the print edition, and just about the same price as the electronic edition. (Of course the web edition and avantgo are free in comparison.) So I can see where NY Times slotted this subscription, I have to say it fits in pretty well with the alternatives.

But…I’m afraid it won’t succeed at this price. And that concerns me because I really want these Kindle subscriptions to be wild successes and stoke the Kindle experience itself. (Which is why I’m taking the time and trouble to write this review.)

The price point needs to be $9.95, or even $5.95 to get significant traction. People who will subscribe are not choosing between print and electronic, they are choosing between Kindle and free (web or PDA) electronic alternatives.

My claim here is that any income the NY Times gets from a Kindle subscription is incremental, and they are not going to capture these subscribers thru one of their other channels. In my own case I’m willing to go from a zero cost subscription to a paid subscription, but not at the current price.

I’m disappointed the Times doesn’t seem to see the potential of e-delivery as offered by Kindle, at least as far as pricing their product to make it a wild success…