I can get Teletext on my TV. Why would I bother with the site?

The familiar Teletext of numbered pages will eventually become obsolete when the company has fully developed its service for digital TVs. So Teletext wants to win over web users as well as the 14 million people who consult the pages every day. It launched this site in 1994.

Seven years ago! It must be a pretty sophisticated site by now.

Oddly enough, no. While there are promises of an "interactive" site that will enable you to buy holidays and flights online rather than just searching for them, it's still a bit primitive. The holiday offers appear on the site in exactly the same format as they do on the TV. You have to scroll from page to page.

Maybe people like to find a familiar format.

Possibly, but with lavish package sites like the Virgin Travelstore snapping at its heels, Teletext should move faster if it wants to keep up. That said, it does bring together thousands of relatively cheap holidays in one place and is unemcumbered by the annoyingly-intimate prose favoured by lastminute.com and the banalities of a brochure.

And it's cheap.

Yes. Prices in late May include £499 for a fortnight in Sri Lanka and £149 for a week in Cyprus. Don't bother exploring all the sections - the flight directory and the travel focus are pedestrian space-fillers - but the holiday weather and flight arrivals are just as rapid and efficient as you'd expect Teletext to be.