(FORTUNE Small Business) – I love magazines and newspapers. I have about a dozen subscriptions and buy probably another half-dozen mags on the newsstand every month. I like to leave them strewn around my apartment so that I achieve the desired "airport newsstand dropped in a Crate & Barrel showroom" look that's so chic these days. And what I don't buy, I read online.

Reading print publications and their corresponding websites works well for me, but it doesn't always for the publishers. Two reasons why: It's expensive to print and mail all those copies--and the websites with the free content are a money pit to operate. So what to do? Deliver the stuff, just as it appears in print, over the web, to be read onscreen using a special viewer. A nifty technology lets publishers do so, and it clearly will solve their problems. Already such august publications as the New York Times, PC Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, and Consumer Reports have signed up to give it a whirl, so expect to get offered a "digital" magazine or newspaper subscription soon. As much as I care about one publisher in particular (Time Inc., publisher of FSB, issuer of my paycheck), does the new format satisfy me the way print and the web does? Based on my experience, my newsstand operator's college fund is safe for now.

Reading a digital publication on the computer is like eating Tofurky at Thanksgiving--a pale imitation of the real thing. You need the eyesight of a fighter pilot to read the preferred full-page mode, especially for broadsheet newspapers like the Boston Globe. Constantly zooming in and out on pages and scrolling around using the directional arrow keys made me queasy.

The companies behind the technology, Zinio (magazines) and NewsStand (electronic newspapers), tout the superiority of their editions over just getting the content free on the publisher's website. "Most people really don't like websites," says Kit Webster, CEO of NewsStand. "The content is incomplete and in a format people aren't used to." I hate to break it to Kit, but I'd take a web version over an electronic one any day. At nytimes.com, tomorrow's paper gets posted throughout the day, letting me get a jump on the news. I had to wait until 5 A.M. to download the electronic edition. I can scan every headline in a section on one web page; I had to flip through the entire electronic section to see what's news.

News sites also usually give readers the option of printing individual articles, e-mailing stories to colleagues, and even just cutting and pasting stories or pictures. The digital version? No, no, and not a chance. NewsStand and Zinio have the technology to let readers clip and share articles, but publishers have to turn them on. Chances are they won't, unless they can figure out how to charge or extract valuable personal information. I'd be in debtor's prison if publishers received even a nickel for every article I've ever passed along.

I won't bore you with the byzantine process for buying and then receiving issues or how you need a broadband connection (downloading a magazine over a dial-up connection is like stuffing Vogue into an apartment mailbox). You know what? Electronic publications want to change an established behavior without improving upon it. If publishers created unique web content tied exclusively to digital editions, I'd certainly reconsider. If there were no other way to get the content, then yes, it is good enough. But every other reason offered to go digital--portability, price, delivery speed--is as ridiculous as my magazine addiction.