TV & Internet...

We get a lot of magazines in the Platt household. We love every one of them, but boy do they pile up quickly. And man, do they use a lot of paper.

Which is why I recently gave Zinio a try. This new service (currently in beta version) delivers digital versions of more than 350 different consumer magazines. You can subscribe or buy individual issues -- including recent back issues -- which you can read online, download to your PC, or even read on your mobile device.

I started with a few free sample issues, and was quickly impressed. The digital versions are exactly the same as their printed counterparts, only paperless. They carry the exact same articles and artwork, in the same layouts, but with added navigation tools and the ability to increase the viewing size of any page up to 400%.

The online versions also come with an abundance of hyperlinks, making it easier to explore the web when a link is included in an article or advertisement. All in all, it's a pretty good experience.

I did have a few problems with the Zinio versions. For one thing, they exaclty reproduce the layout of the printed magazines. This required me to scroll up and down columns, and from one column to the next, in order to actually read any of the articles. That's too much for my poor carpal-tunnel addled wrists.

The Zinio versions are also priced the same as the printed magazines. Since the publishers don't incur printing or shipping costs, I would have expected the prices to be lower. Maybe that will come as Zinio hits some economies of scale.

Still, despite my reservations, Zinio magazines aren't printed on paper, and they aren't shipped from one corner of the globe to another. They don't include non-recyclable cologne inserts, and they don't come in annoying plastic polybags. Any magazines you buy are archived online, so you don't need to keep paper versions lying around, and there's nothing to recycle.

If you're a magazine junkie like me, but have been worrying about the environmental impact of your monthly fix, this could be the solution you've been looking for. Give it a try.