All O'Reilly Ebooks 50% off today

I much prefer buying directly at O'Reilly, given that they can sync the books straight to my Dropbox in both Kindle format and a variety of others, and I particularly like supporting them for their lack of DRM..

You can hook your Kindle to your O'Reilly account, so purchased books will be sent directly to it.

That being said, you'll still have to enter in your payment information whereas with Amazon is one or two clicks.

I strongly prefer having a PDF to a .mobi (which comes with the PDF on O'Reilly).

Amazon Prime contributes to this. Once a year I spend a pile of money, which by my calculations probably isn't actually worth it. The value I get is how I feel much better about Amazon purchases and don't have to worry about considering what kind of shipping to pay for.

It varies widely.

The O'Reilly eBook versions are very consistent. I really rely on the reviews on Amazon for the Kindle versions (there are often complaints of layout issues in code examples and diagrams).

O'Reilly is by far my favourite publisher/store for eBooks. If they can't lay out a certain technical book in a usable form in epub or mobi, then it probably can't be done. In those cases, I just use the PDF on my computer or on a large tablet (Nexus 10). It's all DRM free, multi-format so I can use whichever format is best for the content.

For diagram/image-heavy books I usually default to PDF.

In terms of non-linear reading, it's got to be printed books or PDFs with a proper TOC and bookmarks on my computer.

The ability to search an ebook can be tremendously useful.

I too often prefer using technical books in a non-linear fashion, and a paper book is often still superior for this, but there's not much difference, search can let you "flip through" the ebook quickly, and can find things an average index + Table of Contents (TOC) won't, or won't easily.

Good ebooks will also have links in the index and TOC that take you right to the item.

Note, after reading wiremind's comment: I use a 24 inch high quality WUXGA (1920×1200) monitor and PDFs for this; I can envision problems with smaller form factors and can't speak about other formats.

I use Safari Books for all my programming ebook needs. The best thing about it is searching through all books on the service. If I want to know about a specific class, function or concept I just type it in and get every book that mentions it and every occurrence in that book.

The downside is the Apps, they're slow and prone to crashing which means that the web is the only viable interface.

I read a lot of software books (just bought 2 more from this deal actually), and switched over to e-books about 18 months ago. I had switched over to e-books for everything other than software books about 3 years ago but I was worried about readability of code snippets, the skimming through the book as you mentioned, and more difficulty sharing the book with other people. The advantage was cutting down the giant stack of physical books that was overwhelming my book shelf.

I think the actual reading experience is a bit worse with an ebook on a Kindle compared to a physical copy. Some code snippets are wrapped to another line. I have had the best success with Kindle format on the Kindle, other formats are sub-par (and PDFs are unreadable).

However the big gain has been after I read the book the first time. Being able to pull up any software book at any time on a side monitor while working is fantastic. That is worth any and all frustration reading on the Kindle. The formatting in that case is perfect, and the lack of context switching is great.

Pro-tip: any Kindle book you buy from Amazon can be returned if the formatting doesn't work well on your Kindle. I have done this 2-3 times in the last year without issue and then I just buy the paper copy.

I prefer it.

First I have my library with me at all times. I'm pretty busy and never know when I'm going to get a chance to do some reading, so when the chance comes I know I will have my book with me.

Also I like keeping several pdfs open simultaneously when at my machine so I can cross reference. Even when I'm on the bus.

Searching. Copying code straight into editor.

Cheaper. Less trees. Less storage requirements.

I only buy technical books in ebook format nowadays.

The technology changes too quickly for us to keep killing trees and generating garbage piles of paper with last year's hot technology.

Your concerns about quickly flipping through pages are valid. I regularly read programming books in ebook form, mostly since they are cheaper, but it isn't a perfect experience. I tend to get used to searching and setting a lot of bookmarks. One other note: Charts, graphs and tables tend to not translate well to a smaller screen (I have a nook simple touch, YMMV)

Depends on the book, but on the whole I don't enjoy reading programming-centric ebooks due to the code examples: the line breaks tend to make it extremely difficult to follow what's going on.

It does depend on the device, though: Reading programming books on my iPhone is really bad; My Nexus 7 is better, and my (original) iPad is ok.

I tend to like ebooks for reference due to the searchability. I prefer physical copies when I want to learn a new concept/programming language/etc. I don't know why, but I just feel like I absorb the material better (probably all in my head, but still works out that way :) ).

I tend to prefer it, though not on my Kindle - The Kindle interface is optimized for linear reading.

On either an iPad or laptop, though? Having search is great. As is having the ability to have a whole stack of them with you at all times.

Big plus in kindle is highlight. During reading you can highlight all these crazy gotchas, summaries, reminders, and they are easily available to you everywhere

Well, you have indexes too, and ctrl+f so might as well be better.

This does indeed seem to be the case. And since that means the original topic here is not really news, I'll use this space to point out that this is why, in general, I hate sales and companies that have a lot of them. Constant sales basically tell the customer that the sale price is the real price and you're a sucker if you pay full price... but you have to constantly check and watch and do a bunch of extra work to be sure you get the real (sale) price.

Please, just have a price and charge it. I know, I know, it's better for your metrics to practice price discrimination, and constant sales are a way to do that... but it pisses off customers who just want a simple, fair price. If you really need price discrimination, add "enterprise" features and let people who want throw money at you pay for things no one really needs. Just don't make me stop in the process of buying something because I know the price isn't actually the price and I have to wait until the price is corrected to the real price with a sale (and likely never actually remember to come back when the sale is on).

Having frequent free shipping sales creates the same effect. If I know you offer free shipping sales more than say... once a year, I literally will not buy from you if free shipping is not currently offered. And I will quite likely forget what I was going to buy once free shipping is turned back on.

I'm reading Big Nerd Ranch's Android guide, and it's been pretty solid so far.

As someone that reads a couple books a month I find that really interesting. It is pretty unclear from the website how much it costs, any idea what a personal subscription is?

How much is a subscription to Safari Books Online and can you read them on an iPad?

My best description is that the "cost" of inconveniencing a customer (e.g. limiting device playback, etc.) will never really meet the goal of protecting content. This is because those who want it for free will always find a way to get it (at some "cost"). Those who don't have time/don't give a shit, will pay for the content because the opportunity cost of pirating something is greater than just paying for it.

That said, i find it really annoying as a parent to have to jump through hoops to make backups of my kids DVDs, or convert them to digital for the iPad. So, I'm not stealing anything as I already bought the DVD. I just want my kids to be able to watch it on the iPad.

I don't know of any DRM that "provides a benefit" to the user.

You might want to check their Data Science Starter Kit collection

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/get/data-science-kit.do

Thinking With Data's a great introduction too.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920029182.do

If you're interested in python, my wife says good things about "Python for Data Analysis." Supposedly quite readable and practical.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023784.do

Thank you. I bought couple of books 80% off.

You should perhaps contact their customer service. I had a good experience with them.

I don't have a kindle and O'Reilly offers more formats.