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in reply to [OT] Online 'Bookshelves', does it work?

Your Mileage May Vary </end disclaimer>

I'm in a very similar situation. I'm going to be attending University later this year to study computer science and along with a contract as a web developer, this means I will be spending money I can't really afford on expensive computer books, so just yesterday I was looking at the possibility of getting a safari account and drew up some advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

Disadvantages

In conclusion, I think that a safari account subscription would be a good idea if you require to have access to a number of different fields of computing, some of which you may only need to dip into briefly for a specific task. However, if you only work in a specific aspect, say Linux or Perl, and use books as a constant reference that will always be found lying on your desk, then it's cheaper in the long run to buy a paper version or something like a CD bookshelf. Or maybe do a combination of both a starter safari subscription and have a couple of well thumbed through manuals :)

I hope this helps!

--
Rozallin J. Thompson
The Webmistress who doesn't hesitate to use strict;

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Re: Re: [OT] Online 'Bookshelves', does it work?
by zengargoyle (Deacon) on Apr 06, 2003 at 16:54 UTC

    wait until you get to school, they might have a group account. i stumbled across a 'free chapter' link a while back and when i hit the safari site i found myself magicaly logged in as a 'user from the University of Foo' with access to all of the books.

    if not, bug the library and IT people. a site license for a University is probably costly, but worth it.

    our safari access disapeared as mysteriously as it appeared, it took a few emails about and a couple of weeks, but it's back. =P

    if i were paying for access i would probably setup a squid cache with long expiration times so i could check back over what i'd recently seen while on the road or in the park (with my laptop) but since it's sorta free i don't have the urge to protect my investment in information availability.

    i may not have figured out the right way to use the UI, currently i find it quite annoying to navigate the library and the books, and the pages are way too short so a lot of time is wasted 'turning the page'.

    otherwise it's quite nice to have so many books seconds away.

    real books are nice, but a pain to move every semester. plus they're often out of date after the 4 years you're using them (or at least a couple of editions behind, plus no corrections).