Buying/Renting PDF's of College Textbooks

[Mojambo]

Hey guys,

Does anyone have any experiences/recommendations w/r/t the myriad of services out there that sell/rent electronic versions of college textbooks?

I'd like to go this way this quarter, but I'm not sure which of these services is legit and/or better than another.

What I'd like to be able to do is get pdf versions of some/all of my texts that I could then upload to my ipad and use the Goodreader app to view them.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[Mojambo]

1. kick. n/t

[wysimdnwyg]

2. Be careful of "e-books" like this

I'm using one in my current class, but it's not a PDF or standard e-book that can be read with a Kindle or Nook. It's a proprietary web site that appears to only work with IE - I've tried Firefox, Chrome and Safari and cannot access the book with any of them.

[Mojambo]

4. This is exactly my concern

If I can't put it on my iPad then I don't want to do it.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

3. I'm surprised bootlegging PDFs of textbooks isn't a bigger "industry" these days.

Or maybe it is and I'm just out of the loop. But between the sky-high cost of textbooks and how easy it would be to scan one...

[Mojambo]

5. There was a great torrent site for text books a couple years back

But it got shut down and a replacement site hasn't quite gotten off the ground yet.

[soleiri]

6. I've used coursesmart for the past few quarters

There are two versions, the online version and the downloadable version.
I chose the downloadable version, I also have the app for the ipad.
You do need to be connected to the internet to access it on a mobile device.

It's for a limited time, around a semester.
What I did with a book I wanted to keep was to save as a pdf, 10 (the limit) pages at a time.

I like it better than lugging textbooks around since I take public transportation.