Imagine my surprise when I went to the Vancouver Sun's website to look at classifieds, and they have a new, spiffy 'web-2.0'-ish website for viewing ads. I was impressed... until I started using it.

I use a Mac; the browsers I have available are Safari, Camino and Firefox (Camino and Firefox being based on the same code). In Safari, the website is painfully slow; in Camino, it is not only painfully slow, but I get a pop-up window complaining about my 'personalized settings' and saying it will reload the page. This loops over and over and over again.

The site, besides being incredibly slow to use, is also cumbersome. I can search for apartments from $0-999, or from $900-999, but not, for example, from $600-1000. I cannot search New West *and* Vancouver, I have to pick one. I can sort in one direction by clicking on the column headers (e.g. 'Price'), but in order to sort in the other direction, need to use the drop-down.

I can't filter by date, only sort by 'new listings', which doesn't tell me how old they are until I click on them. When I do, I find out that the listing is 11 days old, so I go 'Back', and all of my filters and sorting is undone. Every time I view an apartment, I have to reset my search criteria and sorting critera. This seems preposterous.

Perhaps this site will be usable some day; I know you claim that your site is 'beta'; however, if it's truly 'beta' then users should have the *option* of using it or not. I am unable to browse the Vancouver Sun's classifieds now, because the only interface they provide is your obviously untested, painfully unusable website. What I wouldn't give for a quick, simple list that I could look through.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, not harder. Your site fails miserably at this, and I would expect that anyone with a grain of sense would be so put off by their initial experience as to never return. I know I won't.