The Guardian and the Observer [Kindle Edition]

Saturday edition is pretty much replicated in full on the kindle, and finding articles is straightforward: A menu on the left of the screen listing sections, then a menu on the right of the screen listing articles - you can either progress page-by-page through the section or use the navigation key to skip to the next article.

Articles include some photos/illustrations, but not to the detriment of the text.

My one complaint (on day one) is that the weekly quiz in the weekend section is not present, nor the Michael Holden or Mick Bunnage sections in the Guide.

If you are a Guardian reader with a Kindle, I would recommend you experience the 14 day trial - as far as I'm concerned, I'll be sticking with the subscription as I am in awe of the work the Guardian does in exposing establishment miscreants...

Edit: After three issues I'm still impressed, but here is info for prospective buyers: As standard each issue is kept for 7 days and then deleted; if you want to save a particular issue then it can be saved for posterity. Individual articles from each issue can be saved to a separate folder (one which also contains bookmarks and notes inserted in books... room for improvement later on hopefully.)

No further realistic complaints; it would be nice to be able to access cartoons and puzzles but this is restricted by the format/technology: for a one-off (5 second?) download in the morning, it matches what the online BBC news website delivers for most of the day.....

Further edit: Michael Holdens` All Ears column is now included, as is the weekly quiz in the Weekend section. What is odd is that as of 21st July the Technology section is not included in the data download.

Edit the third: I mistakenly assumed that the Science and Technology section was still published on a Thursday - it's not in the printed edition, but is available online.

Also, for a period of three weeks the weekend section was missing from the download version, but that has now been reinstated.

Obviously, if you don't like the Guardian's centre-left outlook, and are unimpressed by its longstanding journalistic ethos, you'll probably not want to subscribe. But, as with all other UK-based Kindle newspapers, you can have a 14-day trial for free, via Amazon, and judge this version and/or the newspaper itself for youself.

To counter some negative reviews that I've read, be aware that with Amazon you probably shouldn't trial any Kindle subscription if you're using your Kindle as a "stand alone" device, say having bought one in a shop... you'll need to access your online Amazon account to cancel, which can be time-consuming and tricky to do via the Kindle's browser. That is not an issue particular to the Guardian; its an Amazon issue, and I think they need to ensure that you should have a simple "cancel subscription" option, equivalent to the "add to collection" feature when you right-navigate a book's title.

What you get is an advert-free, non-colour, equivalent of the print edition of the newspaper, which will be delivered to your Kindle when the paper goes to press (so long as your Kindle can receive it). Like a newspaper, and unlike the Guardian's website, it does not update itself during the day. Having subscribed since last year, I've seen it improve in content and ease of navigation, and find myself able to flick through it to what I want to read first, then back to other items, as I'd do with the 'real' thing.

Personally, I've switched easily from buying the paper to this subscription, and find this format suits me. I like having a virtual morning-paper waiting on my Kindle when I get up, and being able to read it without having to carry a fresh bundle of dead tree around every day, which I'll then need to bin/recycle. The major down-side I've encountered is that you can't use it to wrap up broken glass, although I also sometimes miss having the crosswords to fill in (as far as I can) when I'm being bored.

To be topical, I'm also happy to pay £9.99/month to help ensure we continue to have the high-quality journalism this newspaper supports... as we're now finding out, if it wasn't for the Guardian, it's quite possible that NewsCorp would 100% own Sky, and the Murdochs, the media, the police and our politicians wouldn't be undergoing the scrutiny of the Leveson Inquiry.

I'm really pleased that I didn't have to pay £[] per month and instead gained a free trial since the Kindle edition is nothing like as good as the newspaper and electronically I prefer using the BBC News website or Guardian mobile site to this Kindle edition.

It is worth experiencing the Kindle edition to recognise those features of a 21st century newspaper or the BBC News website or Guardian online that we now take for granted and you will certainly miss on the Kindle edition such as:

1. Photos add so much value to news stories - obviously b/w not colour with the Kindle - but they seem irrelevant on the Kindle and don't add value to the article at all.

2. Headlines, sub headlines, pull-quotes, boxes with basic explanations/specific details and photos/images of the journalist that allow you to dip into articles as your interest in the article is either raised or lowered by quick reading/scanning of all of these. All absent on the Kindle edition.

3. The Guardian's statistical charts, diagrams and maps bring stories alive - absent on the Kindle edition. You'd have no idea where that Norwegian island, Utoeya, was with the Kindle edition.

4. Unexpected missing items: TV listings, weather, crosswords and other puzzles, tables and all those tiny news items throughout the newspaper that you scan and only read if interested in. To me the Kindle version of the Guardian/Observer is a subset of the newspaper and I'd suggest making this absolutely clear to potential readers.

5. The key colour photos: particularly the centre page colour photo - spectacular but can't be matched except as a large flat screen image. The cover of G2 that either interests you or not in the major article/s in G2.

6. Absence of grouping of news items other than at a v. high level: international, national. In the newspaper there might be front page and 3/4/5 pages of articles on a major story such as Norway killings or phone hacking - not all of these are present in Kindle edition and I couldn't easily recognise significant news areas for that day as I can with a newspaper or the BBC News website.

What did I like: Nothing really, I still bought the paper each day as I felt I'd missed so much. Even delivery before 5 a.m. was of no value to me as I could just as easily look at the web for BBC news or the Guardian website. Using the Kindle edition reminded me of what it was like as a 10 year old in the 50s trying to read the Times which in those days was tight columns of text and few photos and no headlines on the front page.

My suggestion: take up the Guardian/Observer newspaper subscription at 45% discount on the cover price, but be quick as the offer ends on July 31 2011. It costs less than twice the Kindle edition price and has 1000 times the value.

I will not be extending my free trial of the Kindle edition.

BTW in case you think I'm predjudiced against electronic media: I'm 63, and confess that I have been reading the Guardian for 40+ years, but I have used mobiles routinely since the early 90s; I've been a Blackberry smartphone crackhead (currently a Bold) for 5+ years that I use daily to read BBC News and Guardian mobile news on the train; I've made substantial daily use of the Internet since well before the web started in '95 and I've routinely used laptops as my work/home resource since '92.