My printed copy of the book is getting... worn. While sharing it last week with folks at WorldFest, it got handled by kids, adults, and adults who acted like kids. Most of the damage to the book is mine, especially the writing and highlighting in the chapters, but the book is definitely showing wear and tear...
I've been wanting to get a digital copy for my iPad... and what do you know? O'Reilly is offering a special on eBooks (
up to April 30) where you buy 1, get 1 free. Buy 2... get 2 free, etc. One thing I like about their offer is that for most of their books they offer them in multiple formats - PDF, ePub, and Kindle. And another nice point is that they don't have DRM... no annoying password to type in every time you want to read your book. So, I purchased the digital version (ePub) of Make: Electronics and imported it into my iPad. (My free 2nd selection was
Head First Statistics - same price, so it was like getting both eBooks half off - I like the topic of statistics and wish I was better at it... this book impressed me in printed form, so there you go...)
Here are some screen grabs from the iPad. I can shrink or enlarge the text as needed, so the page count doesn't match the printed book since I've enlarged the print just a bit. All in all, it's quite nice thumbing through the pages of the digital version. My only complaint? Take a look at the iBook shelf and you'll see that the cover of the book simply says "Make" and has the author's name. Come on, O'Reilly! How hard will it be to modify the ePub file to display the actual cover of the book? Look - my Apress book "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure" has its cover... it just looks so much better (my publisher sent me a copy to see how the ePub conversion worked and looked on the iPad - this author is VERY happy with the results). Maybe someone will fix that.
Another nice thing I want to add - by purchasing the digital versions, I get free updates if the books are updated/revised... that'll be nice when the
errors found in the book are fixed in a future revision.
My printed copy of the book is getting... worn. While sharing it last week with folks at WorldFest, it got handled by kids, adults, and adults who acted like kids. Most of the damage to the book is mine, especially the writing and highlighting in the chapters, but the book is definitely showing wear and tear...
I've been wanting to get a digital copy for my iPad... and what do you know? O'Reilly is offering a special on eBooks (up to April 30) where you buy 1, get 1 free. Buy 2... get 2 free, etc. One thing I like about their offer is that for most of their books they offer them in multiple formats - PDF, ePub, and Kindle. And another nice point is that they don't have DRM... no annoying password to type in every time you want to read your book. So, I purchased the digital version (ePub) of Make: Electronics and imported it into my iPad. (My free 2nd selection was Head First Statistics - same price, so it was like getting both eBooks half off - I like the topic of statistics and wish I was better at it... this book impressed me in printed form, so there you go...)
Here are some screen grabs from the iPad. I can shrink or enlarge the text as needed, so the page count doesn't match the printed book since I've enlarged the print just a bit. All in all, it's quite nice thumbing through the pages of the digital version. My only complaint? Take a look at the iBook shelf and you'll see that the cover of the book simply says "Make" and has the author's name. Come on, O'Reilly! How hard will it be to modify the ePub file to display the actual cover of the book? Look - my Apress book "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure" has its cover... it just looks so much better (my publisher sent me a copy to see how the ePub conversion worked and looked on the iPad - this author is VERY happy with the results). Maybe someone will fix that.
Another nice thing I want to add - by purchasing the digital versions, I get free updates if the books are updated/revised... that'll be nice when the errors found in the book are fixed in a future revision.
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