Virtual Textbooks

One of the biggest complaints of students is always about their textbooks. Not only are textbooks ridiculously expensive they are also heavy and awkward to carry around from class to class. Students often struggle to lug backpacks full of big books around them and stress out over how much it costs to buy them at the beginning of each term. In fact many students even rack up some pretty serious credit card debt trying to finance all their books and supplies for each term. However with emerging technologies it seems that some students have found answers to their problems.

Many booksellers are now distributing textbooks in the form of e-books available for students to read online, download to their computers, and to read on various devices like kindles or nooks or even their cell phones through different applications. These e-books are much less expensive than their printed counterparts and because they’re virtual they can all be stored on one device which save students the trouble of carrying them around. The trade off for the money save when buying each books is how much your spend buying the device to download them and read them from. Typical e-book readers cost anywhere from two hundred dollars and up - more depending on the make and model of it and how many books you want to fill it with. The struggle is making the initial purchase but many recent high school grads are asking for them for gifts upon graduation so that they can use them for their school book needs.

These kinds of devices work especially well for reading classic literature which is readily available in e-book form but may pose a problem for a student who is taking a rarer class or needing a textbook of a certain edition. These kinds of books may be harder to find and may not even be available in e-book form. That can mean a lot of wasted money for a student that invested in a reader to use for their textbooks. However, even if only a few of their books are on their reader they can still save themselves from carrying around a lot of extra weight. These readers even have capabilities like highlighting or marking certain sections of the book as well as making notes and some even connect to the internet to allow to look up a fact or a word.

One of the biggest problems with a reader is if it breaks. If you happen to drop your reader, get it wet, or lose it somehow not only are you out the money you spent buying the book you’re out the money you used on the reader as well. Getting these repaired can be pricey but so is buying a brand new one. Another issue is that many of these readers have remotely controlled content from the seller that offers them. Amazon, who sells the Kindle, for example, can delete books off the system or off a reader any time they like regardless of whether or not it’s been paid for and it’s been known to happen. If it does you could be out of a book for the rest of the semester which is a real problem.

Overall readers can be very helpful but they should be used with caution. Decide carefully if one is for you or if you’d be better off buying normal textbooks.