1. Student boards and online book swaps: Many university student centers offer helpful boards where you can find students looking to sell books, or to swap them. Some campuses even have online book exchange web sites where you can locate those looking to sell or swap their text books.
2. Buy used online: We regularly get my husband’s textbooks used from Amazon. All you need is the ISBN. Enter it into Google, or at some other book site, and see if you can find used books for sale. Often, you can get these books for cheaper than the used price at the university bookstore.
3. Alternative bookstores: Some college towns have alternative university bookstores. You can go to these physical locations to find good deals on used textbooks.

It is also worth noting that you can usually sell your old textbooks in these exact places. You will never get back what you paid for a textbook — new or used — but you can recoup some of it.

Image source: greenasian via Flickr

Post from: EveryJoe

Save Money on Textbooks: Buy Used

The images above are not to scale of each other, but the center image is the Kindle DX which you can tell is much larger, just using the scale of the person’s hands (that is unless that got some tiny person to use as a hand model).

The reason I’m more interested in the Kindle DX is because I want the larger format. Although more portable, when I’m reading a good book I prefer a larger format hardback over a smaller paperback.

I also expect to use the larger format to take advantage of reading some PDF manuals and documents as I continue to try and teach myself more about a variety of technologies and other topics.

The challenge though is the significant price difference between the three devices. Here’s a quick comparison.

Images: Product websites

Post from: EveryJoe

Stuck Between a Nook and a Kindle

When I was first learning and teaching myself HTML, I always enjoyed the way information was presented in the "Bible" series from Wiley. I felt the way the book was organized and gave the reader a nice overview of the information was very helpful. I’ve also read through a couple of O’Reilly books and also enjoyed them. The "For Dummies" series are really popular, but I’ve never used one to learn something.

Here’s another question for you, the readers, what books have you enjoyed. Which ones have you read that helped you really grasp and understand that topic at hand with whatever technology you were trying to learn and teach yourself?

If you were going to buy a single book to learn a topic, what series would you look for first on the shelf? Let us know in the comments below.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Best Computer Books for Learning Something New

If I had a spare $500 laying around, this would probably be one of the first things I’d purchase myself. I love reading, I just don’t do enough of it. I read a lot of stuff on my phone when I’m out and about with dead time to fill, but I think having a Kindle would keep me reading more books and other resources, than just websites and the like.

The stats for the new Kindle DX fits me well too. I’m not enthralled with tiny, just ask anyone that’s had a discussion with me about my clunky PPC-6700 brick phone. Having a bit larger device with screen real-estate would be my preference.

One thing I’ve not confused about though is that I don’t think this really replaces a real book and magazine. To me there’s just something about the act of turning pages and thumbing through a book. I’m not sure if that same experience would hold true with the Kindle. Maybe I’m wrong and it wouldn’t be an issue once I used a Kindle for awhile.

Now if I can just figure out a way to get one of these into my hands.

Post from: EveryJoe

Amazon Kindles a Love of Reading

A wiseguy once said that you can judge a man by the applications he keeps on his computer. One such app I’ve come to include in my list of essentials is Delicious Library, which is nothing more than a virtual catalogue of my book, music, DVD and game collection.

What makes Delicious Library an engaging affair is the actual building of your vast library of books and showing it off to your friends. The library allows for tracking of books that you lent out indicating who borrowed it and when it becomes overdue.

Perhaps the best feature of Delicious Library is its online barcode scanning that allows any Quicktime-compatible video camera (like iSight) to scan barcodes and look up Amazon’s index for the title.

[Delicious Library for $40.00]

Post from: EveryJoe

Delicious Library