Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Books and Blogs
VitalSource: It's like iTunes for eBooks
I spotted this via James Duncan Davidson's blog, where he began talking about it by noting, "The best way to describe it is 'It's like iTunes for eBooks.'"The program is called VitalSource Bookshelf and allows you to "Simply download entire books to your computer for as low as 99 cents." Unfortunately, not all of the books are $0.99. On the homepage to the VitalSource Bookshelf store, the highest priced book is Medicine by Mark C. Fishman for $31.99. On the other hand, there are several books which can be had for free, including St. Augustine's Confessions. You have to register for an account to download books, but the interface is very clean and nice, and once you download an ebook for reading you can highlight sections and take notes along the way. Davidson hits the coolest feature in his post, where he says, "Once purchased, the books can be downloaded and viewed on any client machine that you own." Nice. Check it out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
t.p. said 9:06PM on 8-16-2005
I own a copy of vital source vital viewer at a whopping cost of 1500/yr x 4 = 10,000 dollars. I went to a dental school which required its students to purchase an Apple laptop and to purchase textbooks on DVD. Supposedly it was made to believe that this DVD purchase of textbooks was a one time cost of 1500 dollars. Oh no. It turns out Vital Source charges 1500 a year to "rent" the use of these textbooks on DVD. Each year's DVD was basically the same as last years with some minor additions; some DVDs actually deleted school manuals which were actually useful. Basically I paid 1500 each year for a DVD with the same info as last years. Imagine paying for each book four times for the same editions. All in all, I only needed to purchase about 5 textbooks in dental school at a total cost of AT MOST 500 dollars.
Each DVD would time out after about 6 months and you would have to update the software/license and get a new DVD from Vital Source. What's horrible about their software is that it is not very stable. It's a worse version of Adobe Acrobat. The software would crash/freeze and not work when I most needed it. (I was a former Apple Rep so my laptop was not bloated with junk). For my 1500 a year, I probably used it only a couple times a year. I have some buddies that never even opened the package or installed it. In fact, one class sucessfully sued the company b/c their software was not very usable. As far I as I know, there has been many discussion within the student ADA division about the insufficiency of this software. After graduating, my DVD is supposed to be unlocked and fully usable for ever. I still haven't bothered to update my license.
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