To Buy or To Borrow?

[TMP]

Okay... now I have a question: Kindle or iPad? Ugh.

[unforth]

I have an iPad. I'm typing on it right now...while standing in a book store. I adore my iPad, cause it does so much more than just reading. I imagine other tablets would also be good, but I would say tablet over kindle, unless the price difference is a serious issue. I really use this thing for everything from keeping my shopping list to taking notes at meetings to surfing the net in my commute to reading the newspaper and kindle at the gym to watching tv when I go out to dinner solo. I just love it. (no I'm not getting paid for my statement. I just really love my iPad, and have since the day I bought it, in August. And it's gonna save me money in the long run - with this I don't need a smartphone!)

[Kelkel]

I have an iPad and a Nook and I don't regret either purchase. My vision sucks, so I much prefer to read on eInk for extend periods of time.

[natsteel]

If I were to have bought all the books new for my courses this year it would've cost between $2500-3000, and that's with 90% or better in the >$30 range. So I tend to borrow most of the books from the library or ILL. When I take a course in my field, though, or the books are related to my research, I generally buy them used off Amazon, though I am like tmp and carefully read the descriptions looking for ones that say "like new" or "no markings." I came to grad school with a library of about 500 books, which was a pain in the ass to move. I can't imagine how much worse would it be 5-6 years from now if I bought all of them?

[virmundi]

I borrowed everything for my M.A. coursework -- and thereby had saved enough money that when I needed to spring on the fly for an otherwise difficult-to-obtain monograph that cost a lot of money (and needed to be express-shipped), it was not a problem. ILL is awesome, but with some books, it can take weeks/months to make it work. Using this method, I've managed to acquire some truly rare and important works for my research. I don't really need to have copies of the monographs that formed the backbone of my coursework because they were broadly considered important enough -- and thus common enough in many library collections -- that getting them from my library or via ILL was very very quick!

[Sigaba]

FWIW, I'll pass along a suggestion I received from the proprietor of a bookstore on buying used books. If you've seen multiple copies of a certain title, don't buy it. If you've only seen the title once or twice, buy it.

And my own experience has taught me time and again, if you've bought a title used and see another copy at a store, do not check the price. For every time I've been please to find that a book I bought for $10 costs $20 elsewhere, I've seen titles going for much less than what I paid.

[PastHistory]

I have purchased almost every book assigned. Some I really regret spending the money on, others I have been able to use as sources for other classes.

One quick comment about ILL - my school library has begun to check the books assigned for your classes against your ILL requests and if you are requesting a "textbook" they will cancel your ILL request. May not be the case at your school...