Gareth,
I hope the following explains the reason for "regular reading."
The instant knowing you described is great but we forget that most of what we read, we read because we want to demonstrate our comprehension of the topic e.g. work related skills,respect of our peers and passing test etc.
The activation stage is training out mind to answer our questions for us. If we had a photographic memory of what we had read (ie we could mentally read the page with our inner vision) we'd be slowing ourselves to the general reading speed. What we don't realise is we are actually asking our mind to sort the information into "usable" information. That is calculate, reason, compare, summarise, seperate and identify usful information about what we have read... in a word comprehend or "make it make sense", that is what it means to Photoread. A photographic memory image of the page is utterly useless as the information on the page has to be processed and a photograph does not do that, a thinking mind does. That is what we use the activation stage for. Our inner mind has read the book and when we 'activate' using superread, dip scanning, skittering we are allowing our inner mind to tell us straight forwardly what it is that we want to know by pointing it out in the text.
Under normal circumstances out inner mind talks to our conscious mind in metaphors, images and abstract words and frankly 50% of the time our conscious mind doesn't seem to understand. The inner mind knows this is not the fastest way for our conscious mind to receive information from it so that our conscious mind can articulate the information and make use of it to suit our purpose e.g answer test questions. So the supperreading and dipping part of activation is our conscious mind saying to our inner mind ... point it out so I can see it clearly.
Activation is not necessary if you don't need to know the text consciously not care if you comprehend it. Actually the PhotoReading stage is fantastic for eliminating reading material that you will not consciously enjoy.
For example I have photoread a book and my inner mind just told me it is useless garbage and contradictory. Well I wanted to challenge this as the topic of the book was quite enticing. I activated it by asking questions about the topic (using the trigger words) and gad it is useless and contradictory. Moreover I know I've 'read' the whole book. After photoreading it I had a message from within me what was wrong to me about the book but couldn't 'say it clearly'. That's why I deliberately activated it. Now I can explain.
The problem is this aspect of photoreading is difficult to explain because it is an experiential thing. If I were to try to explain it in one sentence I would say...
The reason we work on deliberate activation is because the communication between the inner mind and our conscious mind is underdeveloped in 99% of the population and we often cannot grasp consciously what the inner message is.
Basicly we haven't learnt to trust our inner mind enough. Our conscious mind demands that it gets the information in a manner that it understands... i.e words spoken to us in the exact format that we need them. Our inner mind tends to give us the information in abstact form and the conscious mind needs to learn that language. So intially we find ourselves "regular reading" parts in order to clarify that communication.
As for whether photoreading works...
A lot of people believe that they can't do maths either... which is fortunate for accountants who probably represent the 03% of the population who had the belief that sums work and took the time to learn it. 
Really your belief is the factor in determining whether you can or cannot do something.
Alex
