"Actually if they delivered a digital edition I could download at home then read disconnected on a laptop I’d be very interested."

The New York Times offers a couple of downloadable versions of the paper. One seems to be a kind of Flash / pdf thing that keeps the format, and the other is a gadget called 'Times Reader', which lives on your desktop and downloads the latest content. It will bring down the front page content for free, or the whole lot if you subscribe. It also keeps the last week's worth of news archived, and lets you do the crossword.

Times Reader runs on Adobe Air, which I'm sure is very convenient for everybody except the user.

I downloaded it last month, and since then have opened it maybe three times, one of which was to show it to somebody else. Still, as a free download it's a curiosity, and I'm sure it has potential, even if it didn't grab me in the end: https://timesreader.nytimes.com/