We agree with the favorable review by Kieren McCathy in The Register of the beta versions from The Guardian and The Observer of London. A consumer doesn't first need to download any software. Each page of the newspaper appears on the screen in its original printed colors and format. Clicking your mouse on a story opens a popup box with an enlargement of the story. As McCathy notes, "The navigation is surprisingly easy."

Like McCathy, we're particularly impressed that Guardian Limited on its own created the system — without using digital edition middleware vendors such as NewsStand, Inc., Olive Software, NewspaperDirect, MHS, or others. We think this application is as sophisticated as anything produced by those vendors but without those vendors' disadvantages for the newspapers' publishers. There are still a few bugs (these are of course beta editions) and some photos are missing due to unresolved issues of copyright.

The current beta test of the editions is free. However, Simon Waldman, the newspapers' director of digital publishing, says thes digital editions will eventually costs £99 per year or £10 a month. That rate is competitive with the the digital editions from The Times (£90 per year) and the Telegraph (£149 if three consecutive three-month subscriptions are purchased).

Waldman this week told us that the digital editions are still someone of a niché experiment for these newspapers, but that he has high hopes. (Look too for some interesting comments from him in a story we're writing this month about the linked fate of print and Web editions.)