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Comment by checker659 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if I'll just come off as an ass but have you tried Safari Books (http://my.safaribooksonline.com/) yet? Monthly subscription fee is about 25 bucks and it gives you unlimited access to most books from o'reilly and some from Apress as well. I think it's a much better alternative to the deal at hand.

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My only recommendation wrt Safari Books is that you use the download tokens in a timely manner. A while back I lost something like 20-30 of them because the subscription lapsed, and unless they've changed it, once you lose them, they're gone forever.

And that sucks IMHO.

I agree about the download tokens. How they are handled is the only thing I dont like about the safari service. You get five per month and unused tokens last only for three months after which they disappear. So unless you keep track and download some book chapters every month you are likely losing tokens. That being said I think its a compliment to the service that this minor point is my only gripe against it.

I believe different plans have different terms on the token amount/length - my corporate plan gives me something like 50 tokens to use in a year.

Guys, there is a checkbox under "Email Preferences" that allows you to be alerted when your tokens are about to expire! Great feature

My school library's subscription gets me unlimited access to the service. I wasn't aware about the book expiration issue. Good to know about it because I'll be graduating soon and I plan to subscribe to the service on my own.

Even public libraries have Safari subscriptions, e.g. Harris County Public Library (Houston area). There are different versions of Safari, so some things are missing from this more public subscription, but there is a lot of stuff in there for free, after logging in with a library card.

In the Safari settings, you can turn on a reminder email for soon-to-expire tokens. Does that not work? (I'd better check, I've received no reminder email and I must have some close to expiring.)

I signed up when they had a promotion: The unlimited account, normally $40-something a month, at $30/month for the first year.

Today, I find I need to learn/abuse some Joomla (not my choice). A Safari book will, I think, more quickly give me a coherent overview.

EDIT: Just checked -- my tokens are valid for 6 months from the date of issue.

The reason this is better is because their ebooks are DRM-free. Not so with Safari's books. When you use the download tokens from Safari, you get a book that is riddled with watermarks and legal threats on every single page.

When I'm reading a book having a legal threat with my name embedded in it at both ends of every single page is extremely distracting and makes the book nigh-unreadable.

I let my download tokens expire on purpose because what you get with them is garbage.

Thanks. I was not aware of this, not having used any tokens, yet. Disappointing.

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