Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[freeformschooler]

There's also those courses (I'm looking at you, standardized foreign language supplements) that come out with a 'new' version every semester and will refuse to give you a grade or let you into the mandatory online activities if you don't have the current material.

This kind of horseshit makes me so mad. It's even worse than that 'new' version. An economic gimp suit every student with hybrid classes now wears seven days a week.

Also, I get most of my textbooks through rentals like chegg.com. It saves me $200-$300+ per semester. Way cheaper than Amazon.

[Frumple]

Nnnyeeah. I won't rent textbooks, personally. Beyond the risk of it (gods help you if something happens and you're late returning it), it's just... look. If I'm going to pay >100 bucks (Hell, more than about 10-ish.) for a book, I will by god damn well keep that book. Even if it amounts to nothing more than material for a bibliotable or library donation or whatev'. I'm not paying someone that much money for something they will insist on having back. Not books, anyway.

[freeformschooler]

Risk? I've rented almost twenty textbooks now over the course of college, and not one of them has been in bad condition. Plus, it's sooo cheap. Students give me a death glare when I mention this one textbook I got for like 20-30 bucks. Most of the stuff in those books is information I could get elsewhere if I really need it, but we're required to Read Chapter 3 for Homework during class, so to Chegg.com I go.

[Frumple]

... not the risk of damage. The risk of going overdue. As I hear it, most of the online book rental places (chegg somewhat especially, if reviews are to be trusted) will absolutely shaft you if you're so much as a minute late on returning the text in question. I wouldn't really expect it to be an issue, but... sometimes stuff comes up, y'know?

[freeformschooler]

Well, that's never been a problem. I just return them when Christmas or summer break starts. The only time it's been a problem is when some bureaucratic mismanagement kicked in and I had to send a support person the e-mail they gave me saying they got the book back like three times before they truly believed they did, but they didn't charge me anything extra for it.

Ofc, I can only do this for 1-2 classes a semester now because every goddamn hybrid class requires one of those bundle coursework subscriptions that are just as expensive as a full price book.

[Blargityblarg]

I have not yet purchased, rented, borrowed, stolen or otherwise acquired a single university textbook.

[Lord Shonus]

I feel really bad for the students who buy all their textbooks full price at the college bookstore.

They probably get C's and D's in their courses if they're that rich and stupid.

There are other ways to do it? O_o

Amazon.com.

As someone who works in the used book industry, you do NOT want to risk that. It's a real gamble.

As someone who has and is continuing to buy books from Amazon.com and has never had a problem with their customer service, I don't know what the hell you are talking about.

My company is THE largest seller on Amazon. (OK, technically we're the 12 largest sellers, but whatever). Seeing what goes out, *I* certainly wouldn't buy from us. Free mold in every order.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I feel really bad for the students who buy all their textbooks full price at the college bookstore.

They probably get C's and D's in their courses if they're that rich and stupid.

There are other ways to do it? O_o

Amazon.com.

As someone who works in the used book industry, you do NOT want to risk that. It's a real gamble.

As someone who has and is continuing to buy books from Amazon.com and has never had a problem with their customer service, I don't know what the hell you are talking about.

My company is THE largest seller on Amazon. (OK, technically we're the 12 largest sellers, but whatever). Seeing what goes out, *I* certainly wouldn't buy from us. Free mold in every order.

Well, I guess I never bought from your company. I can't see how you could possibly be that big on Amazon with service that bad. Amazon does unspeakable things to sellers who do stuff like that.

[Lord Shonus]

It's not every book, obviously, but it's common enough that I don't trust it. Mold is quite rare, but the people that do our conditions are very, very stupid. (The company likes to have that.)

[Vector]

Nnnyeeah. I won't rent textbooks, personally. Beyond the risk of it (gods help you if something happens and you're late returning it), it's just... look. If I'm going to pay >100 bucks (Hell, more than about 10-ish.) for a book, I will by god damn well keep that book. Even if it amounts to nothing more than material for a bibliotable or library donation or whatev'. I'm not paying someone that much money for something they will insist on having back. Not books, anyway.

Yeah, that's usually the way I feel about it.  I mean sure, it's a lot of money, so if I had no interest in the book I would certainly rent it.  But generally I don't take courses with boring textbooks, anyway, because I feel like a professor who can't pick something reasonable for us to read really isn't someone I want to learn from (I'm supposed to spend HOW much time with this per week under your guidance?  Yeah, don't think so).

[freeformschooler]

Also, I just hate digital textbooks in general. Oh, you said... look it up in the appendix? Pardon me while I look at the index page, find which part of the appendix I need to look at in your massive, unbookmarked PDF/other E-book and then slowly scan through it on this giant laptop/tiny smartphone screen, all of which could have been done in eight seconds with a print book. Yes, I will gladly learn how to do all the things I need to do in your course this way.

"Haha, why did you get the e-book then?" Because it came "free" with the subscription homework service, of course! And buying a print copy would have been literally paying the highway robbery price of the textbook twice.

[Frumple]

... I've actually been pretty fond of the textbook ebooks I've used so far. Least the non-website locked ones. Being able to have 2+ instances open at the same time is a lot easier than, like, ripping out book pages or something. Search feature also godsend, yes yes. It does help that I've been reading off a computer screen pretty voraciously for better than a decade now, though.

[freeformschooler]

... I've actually been pretty fond of the textbook ebooks I've used so far. Least the non-website locked ones. Being able to have 2+ instances open at the same time is a lot easier than, like, ripping out book pages or something. Search feature also godsend, yes yes. It does help that I've been reading off a computer screen pretty voraciously for better than a decade now, though.

It's just so hard to get used to, not from a visual but organizational standpoint. Something feels lost replacing the flip pages onto other pages feature with ctrl+f. I definitely see your point about having multiple instances open for reference, though. Hadn't even considered that.

[SalmonGod]

I get frustrated with physical books anymore... digital media has spoiled me.  So much more convenient.  Flipping pages feels agonizingly slow and laborious.

[Vector]

For mathematics, where you're expected to spend literally an hour reading every page, physical books are definitely the way to go.  Especially because most math people are visual over verbal thinkers, so sometimes you remember an equation in terms of the page layout, rather than any sort of search term.