college textbooks?

[mellor_21]

hey all, i heard that textbooks can be gotten on the droids, anyone have any more information?

 

[ziggynagy]

Aldiko Book Reader is a free app that allows for downloading of books. Many titles under the public domain (copyrights are no longer in affect) can be downloaded for free, though US copyright would apply to most works whose first date of publish is within the past 120 years. The great news is that many pieces of classic literature can be found at no cost.

There are also copyrighted material available (such as textbooks), but these may have a purchase price when downloading.

 

[mellor_21]

There are also copyrighted material available (such as textbooks), but these may have a purchase price when downloading.

do you think the prices would be comparable to kindle for the downloads? my sister's looking at a kindle pretty seriously since apparently she can get her textbooks for like $10 a piece.. i'm asking cuz i've been wanting a droid for a lil while but couldn't justify the cost while going to school, but if i can get the textbooks for around that price instead of the $130+ price from the school then the phone would pay for itself.

thanks for the help!

 

[ziggynagy]

I looked at the Aldiko catalog currently available, the majority of the textbooks are published by O'Reilly, Microsoft Press and TidBITS. Most titles ranged from $10-$35, but since it's such a limited offering of publishers I doubt this would support a majority of your course load.

Of course, this could change. Aldiko is an Android-only application and with the growing popularity of open source and phones that use open source there is the potential for the ebook catalog to become more robust if more publishers view this as a reasonable means of distribution (the reason many made the jump to Kindle).

If there are any publishers you know you school tends to use, it may be worthwhile to email to see if they plan on supporting an Aldiko catalog in the near future. Happy phone hunting and best of luck on the upcoming semester!

 

[maxisbook]

Sorry I don't have any idea abut droids....But if you are searching for textbooks means, I think justtextbook will be more useful to you.

I hope it would be helpful to you.

 

[christim]

There are android apps for the Borders, Barnes and Nobel's, and Amazon's book readers. Anything you can read on those stand alone devices you can read on android. A stand alone reader would be easier to read in the sun but if most of your reading will be inside a phone or tablet device would work fine. As mentioned above Aldiko is another reader. It is also the one I use.

Calibre is open source software that will convert various e-book formats from one to reader format to another too. This includes PDFs.

calibre - E-book management
Input formats CBZ, CBR, CBC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TXT
Output formats EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, TXT

 

[kalisha]

Just get a list of your classes and go to the bookstore. You can find books based on the course codes, etc. and workers at the bookstore can help you the first time. It's good to go early before class because you can find used books (they're usually gone after you get your syllabus) and those are often up to $50 cheaper than new. Don't waste your money on new books unless you have to! It really makes no difference! Also, it's nice to get your books and not have to wait in line for hours. During the first week of school, the bookstore will be PACKED.