Sure, you can look up text articles, photo galleries and videos from the magazine's 54-year history. But wait till you check out the online reader, which lets you page through each issue by clicking your mouse.

I've been spending the better part of my morning clicking through issue after issue, ranging from a Cassius Clay (a.k.a. Muhammad Ali) cover story from 1963 ("Cassius Invades Britain!") to Dwight Clark's "The Catch" from 1982, which began the 49ers dynasty of the '80s.

OK, and a few of the swimsuit editions, too (yep, they're all present and accounted for).

Combing through the online archives of storied publications like Sports Illustrated isn't exactly new; indeed, the New York Times recently stopped charging for access to its archives, and you could spend days poring over re-formatted text articles spanning decades of history.

But paging through actual issues (all of them), complete with pictures and ads? That's a feature you don't often get, and the Sports Illustrated online reader is pretty sweet, especially considering that it's free.

You can flip pages at the click of your mouse, view thumbnails of the entire issue, and zoom in on any page. Especially fascinating are the period advertisements—check out all the liquor and cigarette ads ("The World Agrees on 'Gibley's, please'!"), not to mention the spots for Old Spice.

The Sports Illustrated Vault (which launched earlier this week) isn't perfect; a quick hit of "most popular" stories for a given topic or sports figure would've been a nice touch, and if you misspell someone's name, don't expect any help from the SI search engine.

Still, kudos to SI for delivering such a rich resource, all for the low price of nothin'.

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Sports Illustrated Vault