Safari Books Online works like a library. You check out books to view online for 30 days and then exchange them. The amount you can checkout is based on your subscription. $10 US/month allows 5 books. So depending on how many books you would reference or read will determine if the service is worth $120 US a year.
They currently have 1878 titles available (23 page PDF) from the following publishers: Sun, Java, Addison Wesley, O'Reilly, New Riders, Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall PTR, QUE, Alpha, Sams, AdobePress, macromedia Press and Microsoft Press.
A few points
- Books that come with CDs have the same content available to download.
- You can search the entire library, just your bookself or an individual book.
- Ability to add bookmarks and add your own notes to pages.
- You can jump to any page using the index or table of contents or you can click page by page.
- Search results will preview the page(s) each search word(s) was found on.
- No more buying books that will be out dated in a year and have access to the latest information.
- Ability to get the entire book to read only one paragraph.
- Books not checked out can still be viewed in preview mode showing a portion of the page.
Comments
Neil T. - November 23, 2003 3:26 pm
I got a 30-day trial for that too, except over here it's £9.99 (around $16 USD) per month as opposed to $10. I might try it but you have to provide card details upfront and if after 30 days you don't cancel your account then you get charged. I'm hopeless at remembering things like that so I haven't bothered.
Peter Rukavina - November 26, 2003 11:04 am
I signed up for a 5-slot subscription in the spring so as to be able to have access to an XSLT book. I've used the other slots, off and on, over the summer and into the fall. I keep the subscription, at least in part, because I think it's just a darned good idea, and I want to support it.