Online Bookstores for Technical Books?

Bookwork asks: "I'm looking for a decent (read: reliable and cheap) online book retailer that has a good selection of technical books, particularly computing related ones. So far the best I've come up with is bookpool.com, but I don't know much about them. If anyone has suggestions for decent online technical bookstores, I'd love to hear about them. The reason I'm asking this here is I guess many of you would purchase these sorts of books also, and may have some suggestions - I'm in the throws of building a collection of books such as those recommended on places like here."

Book Shopping services

[hfcs]

I've run most of my purchases through http://www.bestbookbuys.com/ [bestbookbuys.com] It'll point you to several sources for that title (search by author, title or isbn) along with estimated shipping. More often than not, bookpool.com turns out being the most affordable. I've never had any problems with them. YMMV. -Bill

Re:Can't beat Powell's - Amen

[abh]

Just wanted to pipe and and say "Amen"... Powell's Technical Books in Portland is a geek haven. You walk in and are confronted by the smell of books, aisles and aisles of anything and everything technical... computers, engineering, physics, mathematics... you name it.

There's something to be said for seeing an entire bookcase about 15' high and probably a good 30' long with nothing but O'Reilly [oreilly.com].

addall.com

[caite]

Generally for technical books I search at addall.com (www.addall.com [addall.com]) and purchase from whatever place has the best price on all the books I was buying. Since they vouch for their merchants, it seems a decent place to start. That's actually how I started ordering from bookpool.

Both addall and bookpool are pretty decent.

Re:Can't beat Powell's Tech Books

[Xahmish]

Another endorsement for Powell's from a Stump Town geek who never worked there. Only shopped there. Where else are you going to find an extensively cataloged inventory of used books?

Just say No Amazon [noamazon.com]

Here's one..

[Anonymous Coward]

You can check out books24x7.com - they have a decent selection of IT-type books, but not so much hardcore programming stuff. I think you can search for free, but actually reading them requires an exchange of a monetary quantity.

Can't beat Powell's Tech Books

[198348726583297634]

They have a great physical presence, but since most of the salshdot crowd won't be in portland, check em out online:

Powells [powells.com] - disclaimer: I used to work for them. They have more obscure merchandise than you can shake a stick at, so if you ever need an old math or engineering text, try em out.

(yeah, I'm a shill- but that's what this topic's about)

OPAMP

[TheZork]

http://opamp.com/ [opamp.com]

One of the best technical bookstores in Los Angeles. It's a lot of fun to browse the store, and now they're on the Web. They claim to beat Amazon's prices, too.

Page 1 books

[OmegaDan]

I've always had good service from pageonebook.com ... they carry alot of technical titles, they even have used versions of some.

bookpool.com

[joedumb]

bookpool.com [bookpool.com] has pretty good prices

was looking for same

[bluelip]

I used to look for the cheapest books I could find to gather as much knowledge as possible. I then found nearly all of the technical info I needed on the net. It takes some time to get used to reading in a different format, but it's nice once you do. I also don't buy too many magazines since their is an online "community" for everything now-a-days.

Suggested on-line technical bookstores

[chipuni]

The two that I like for their RL bookstores are digitalguru.com [digitalguru.com] and fatbrain.com [fatbrain.com] . However, if you're just looking for online bookstores, you can find a list in the usual place [yahoo.com].

FatBrain

[JamesA]

www.fatbrain.com [fatbrain.com] has a great selection of technical materials.

- James

Additional suggestion

[decesare]

www.softpro.com [softpro.com] would be another place to check out. They have stores in Massachusetts and Colorado, but do online orders, as well.

Ummm.

[Spackler]

Amazon. Yeah, I know that sounds like a "duh" kind of answer, but they carry pretty much any book that is talked about on slashdot, and the prices will be better than your local B&N or Borders. Sombody mentioned a Perl Algorthm book here that might be helpful to me. Amazon had it in stock and I had it the next day at my work.

Free online alternatives to expensive paper books

[sachachua]

Paper books are often useful (pretty pictures, reading code in the bathroom or in bed), but I'm on a student's ultra-tight budget, so I tend to prefer free electronic books whenever possible.

I find that Hogan Books [hoganbooks.com] (http://hoganbooks.com/freebook/webbooks.html [hoganbooks.com]) lists quite a lot of free books on the Web. The search engine makes it even more useful.

Many of the entries come from InformIT [informit.com] (http://www.informit.com/ [informit.com]), which has a pretty good free library.

Then there's the Linux Documentation Project [linuxdoc.org] (http://www.linuxdoc.org [linuxdoc.org]) for Linux-specific things.

Of course there's also all the other documentation on the Net. Search engines are wonderful.

Not quite computer-related but also worth checking out are Project Gutenberg [promo.net] (http://promo.net/pg/ [promo.net]), the Internet Public Library [ipl.org] (http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/index.html [ipl.org]) and the UPenn Digital Library [upenn.edu] (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/lists.html [upenn.edu] ). Mostly classics and other things whose copyrights have expired, but you have a couple of new books here too. General reading material - bookworm fare. =)

Yes, I know, you were looking for paper copies, and a lot of interesting information isn't available online. But it's worth checking out anyway. =)

Great deals on tech books

[Theta116]

try http://www.a1books.com They actually are cheaper than most other book places

safari.ora.com

[DAldredge]

Try safari.ora.com. It is an online only (html based) subscription service where you subscribe to X number of books per month for Y dollars. Each month you can chose new book. It's a pretty cool service.