Because O'Reilly is a sponsor of PLUG and regularly gives us books to give away I felt it was appropriate to bring this to everyone's attention...
Safari Books now has a new pricing model that allows access to the entire collection of books. It is called "Safari Library" amazingly enough. This use to be an enterprise account only thing, but now anyone can get access. https://ssl.safaribooksonline.com/subscribe I have recently obtained a Library account and so far I am really enjoy it. I have used Safari many times in the past, but having access to every single book on there really increases it's usability. I can view and search full texts across thousands of tech books. It is a very economical way to get self-paced training as well. $40.00/month for access to thousands of great IT books is a pretty amazing deal if you think about it. You also get 35% off books if you want a hard copy. Safari has really helped me here because I've been able to preview books before going out and buying them. In some cases I have purchased books I wouldn't have even considered after growing to love them on Safari. As you can tell, I'm pretty positive about it. However, I don't want to sound like a commercial, so here are some negatives: The site is dog slow. It takes several seconds to load up content. This isn't a big deal if you are loading a chapter section and then reading the entire thing. If you are browsing a book however the speed could be much better. Also, I could really use a 'virtual finger' to keep my place in a book while I look something else up. Hyperlinks help, but I think there needs to be some better functionality here. In conclusion: Despite the speed problems and a few usability bumps you get an amazing amount of value. I highly recommended you try it. There is a 14 day free trial available if you want to give it a spin, just be sure to cancel it if you don't like it. -Ryan /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
