DnD Insider - Just Dragon & Dungeon until May 08.

[Bagpuss]

Didier Monin mentioned on the WotC forums.

There is no plan to provide access to the D&DI applications in November or December. The D&DI applications will launch when 4th Edition launch, in May 2008.
There will be a beta test period before May, but the dates where this will happen are not yet known at that stage.

(link)

I hope you don't have to pay full price come January then....

 

[DaveMage]

Interesting. (And yeah, if they charge for it in January, they're nuts.)

Actually, if the latest online "Dragon" is any indication, I don't think it's something I would miss if it were to go away. I'm not too impressed.

 

[Bagpuss]

I wonder if you get back issues for free when you join up or will Octobers Dragon and Dungeon disappear in November? Or will they have some method of tracking which months you were a paid up member for.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'm fairly certain they've said the DI is free until May.

 

[Bagpuss]

That pretty good then originally it was going to be until 2008, which you assume starts in January, but if it is until May that's a whole lot of free Dragon and Dungeon articles.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I wonder if you get back issues for free when you join up or will Octobers Dragon and Dungeon disappear in November? Or will they have some method of tracking which months you were a paid up member for.

From what I can tell, as long as you are a member, you'll be able to browse all the articles from all the issues in web page format.

If you are a member at the end of any given month, you'll be e-mailed a PDF copy of that months issue(or you'll be able to log in and download it). When you stop being a member, you can still read your PDF copies, but you won't be able to access the web content anymore.

If you sign up after a couple of issues have come out, you'll never be able to download PDF files of the missing issues (or maybe you can pay some extra fee to get access to them?).

At least that's my thought. Otherwise, it seems like someone could sign up for an account at the end of 2009, download all the PDFs of every issue then cancel their account and only pay for a month. Then wait a year and do it again for a years worth of issues.