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For Textbooks: iPad eBooks or Hard copy?

katyoshi

katyoshi

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 11, 2009
403
50
Honolulu, HI
Hey I'm in graduate school and in the nurse practitioner program. The books we use are huge and some books are even available on the Amazon kindle store. Do you think it'll be good to go digital and try stick with digital books as much as I can? I use my ipad in the clinic too. I think the books from Lange are good.
 
i feel like it would be a great idea to have all my text books on my ipad! this spring, i'm gonna try and do just that. i'm a little ocd though, and i want all of my books in the same format. preferably in pdf or epub. (i like the books app)
 
My only possible gripe with using books on my iPad is that I cannot use them while using my iPad for notetaking and browsing the web (something I do admittedly quite a lot during classes). However, I would rather get a second iPad and carry that around as well than carry the kilos of books I have to sometimes bring with me as well.

A problem outside of the US however, is that a lot of textbooks are only available on paper. I do not really have the option of using the iPad (or OSX sodtware) at all, or else I would use it as much as I can.
 
You would actually buy two ipads for that purpose? I was thinking my MBP for notes and ipad for books and light notetaking during lectures where I don't need a book during the time. :confused:
 
You will be able to read, surf the net and take notes quite easily once multitasking arrives. I'm doing that as we speak.
 
LiloThePleo said:
You will be able to read, surf the net and take notes quite easily once multitasking arrives. I'm doing that as we speak.
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Really? I guess we'll be saved with using and carrying around "one device" across campus. sometimes classes are very far away lol...
 
$$$

worth thinking about money though too. I've always bought used textbooks and the sold them at the end of my courses saving huge amount of money. Can't sell back your ebooks though. Even though it is nice and portable, chances are when you are starting in the hospital you won't have the time to look things up in your textbooks. good luck, there may be ebook readers out there (i dont know) that will allow for highlighting and note-taking, worth looking for as those are obvious drawbacks.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I'm doing this this semester. All but one of my texts are available as ebooks. One is available only as an ebook through the uni. Two via the Kindle app and three on Coursesmart. The last one is only in print, but I've only touched that one once. I saved about $350 this semester alone.
 
I guess savings of an ebook sort of equals the books you would sell back? Though this isn't always the case since usually the university store would give you back like less than 35% of what you paid for the book if you bought it from THEIR store.

You can read books with iannotate?
 
After trying out my Kindle books on my dad's iPad last night, I don't know that I ever want to see another paper book. The app could use some work on searchability and other enhancements like that, but as far as reading it's awesome. There's no more "this book's text is too big/too small for me" excuse. If textbook makers can add good multimedia to their digital books, I would never buy another hard copy textbook again. It's worth taking the hit on not trading them in. I especially wouldn't miss lugging around that calculus book. Might as well throw an iMac in my backpack.
 
I get as many textbooks as I possibly can through the Kindle app. While I enjoy reading them on the iPad, the Kindle for Mac application is also pretty good for the MBP or MBA.
 
katyoshi said:
Hey I'm in graduate school and in the nurse practitioner program. The books we use are huge and some books are even available on the Amazon kindle store. Do you think it'll be good to go digital and try stick with digital books as much as I can? I use my ipad in the clinic too. I think the books from Lange are good.
Click to expand...

This doesn't really have to do with books but what is the difference from a nurse to a nurse practitioner?
 
katyoshi said:
Hey I'm in graduate school and in the nurse practitioner program. The books we use are huge and some books are even available on the Amazon kindle store. Do you think it'll be good to go digital and try stick with digital books as much as I can? I use my ipad in the clinic too. I think the books from Lange are good.
Click to expand...

Depends on content for highly technical books I prefer hardbound for smoother navigating between different pages anything non-scientific ereader is fine.
 
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I think the hard part for you is finding books in ePub or PDF format if you want to read them on the iPad. Elsevier, who publishes most of the nursing books, does not have books on Amazon or other ebook platforms. I am in nursing school now, and I know it is not NL school, but I can't find any that you can in another place other than Elsevier. They have the market cornered and do not spread their books around.
 
I prefer mine on the ipad. I think the best part about it is being able to perform a search within the book. Much more desirable than flipping through pages looking for what you need. Also it is a good point about returning books and getting some money back. While that it is true, I find the digital versions to be much cheaper, and when you return a book, you get crap in return. Seems to be a wash to me
 
It really depends on your situation, but a friend of mine has found ebooks to be a perfectly good way to save hundreds of dollars every semester.

$0 vs $600 is a no brainer.
 
redshift1 said:
Depends on content for highly technical books I prefer hardbound for smoother navigating between different pages anything non-scientific ereader is fine.
Click to expand...

I totally agree. I took a real estate finance class and bought the Kindle version of the book for my iPad. Huge mistake. There's no such thing as page numbers, it's organized by word count I think. Good luck finding charts and graphs, especially if you change the font size. Maybe it's just me, not being used to the new method but I swore off ebooks for any subject that uses a lot of math, charts, graphs, etc.

In addition, Amazon was only selling the 13th edition of the textbook in ebook form, which came out in hardback in 2006. The 14th edition hardback came out in late 2009. I took the class in 2010 using a 3+ year old version which is huge difference when it comes to the huge change in the real estate market and economy since the end of 2008. I was missing all the new chapters and analysis.

For literature and history etc..... Ebooks may be fine but for technical stuff, I'll never buy one again.
 
benhollberg said:
This doesn't really have to do with books but what is the difference from a nurse to a nurse practitioner?
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A nurse is a Registered Nurse usually with a Bachelors degree. The nurses who usually work in the hospital floors like ICU, emergency etc; they care for the "patient's response to illness" by another care provider. Nurse Practitioners are graduate prepared Advanced Practice Registered Nurse who can practice independently and prescribed drugs, who care to "diagnose and treat disease and promote health". Look on www.allnurses.com.
 
katokalin22 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I think the hard part for you is finding books in ePub or PDF format if you want to read them on the iPad. Elsevier, who publishes most of the nursing books, does not have books on Amazon or other ebook platforms. I am in nursing school now, and I know it is not NL school, but I can't find any that you can in another place other than Elsevier. They have the market cornered and do not spread their books around.
Click to expand...

Man this sucks. I wish all publishers would allow ebooks in amazon or ibooks. iBooks doesn't have jack for medical/nursing books. Sorry for the many posts guys...I'm so use to just replying separately like in facebook.
 
katyoshi said:
Man this sucks. I wish all publishers would allow ebooks in amazon or ibooks. iBooks doesn't have jack for medical/nursing books. Sorry for the many posts guys...I'm so use to just replying separately like in facebook.
Click to expand...

I plan on using blue leaf on my books if I can't find them in digital. It's affordable I think. Only $100something for around 1,000 pages.
 
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