Are many/any text books available on Kindle?

[knowthyself]

Hey all -

I'm starting CS at Ryerson this fall, and am wondering if any textbooks may be available on Kindle (or any other e-reader). If I can avoid filling my shelves with boat-loads of dead trees, I'll do that.

Cheers.
Jeff

[Brightguy]

It's not the standard yet, but it depends on the specific book. For technical subjects such as CS ebooks are typically in PDF format, and not designed for ebook readers. For example, Springer makes PDFs available of a lot of their recently published textbooks. Alternatively, if the textbook is popular enough you can find scanned bootleg copies online.

I've heard that PDFs are still readable on an ebook readers, especially with a large screen, but I haven't personally tried it. I plan to get one in the future though, as I am really getting sick of paper.

[Tony]

The new Kindles render PDFs, but I've had mixed results with those.

I find that in most classes course notes are much more applicable than suggested textbooks (I haven't been buying any CS textbooks for class so far). Some courses would post the slides online; there was one where the TA emailed you a PDF copy if you were to ask for it nicely. So this really depends on the lecture staff.

You can read wikipedia on a Kindle, so that's kind of like all of the textbooks

[rdrake]

The brief experience reading a PDF on Tony's Kindle DX was rather positive. Personally I read lecture slides and even textbooks on my little Kobo ($150 at Chapters). The DX's larger screen is definitely a plus, but its price point is a great deal larger.

Some textbooks come with a CD copy as well (the intention being that you don't need to carry the book everywhere). Others are on Springerlink or other places as mentioned above. Most universities should provide you with access to Springerlink and other sources through the library. Finally there are less than legitimate means to acquire textbooks.