I tend to hit Ebay right after the exam period of the previous year, I have doubles of some of my Engineering Maths textbooks as they were so cheap I didn't bother checking if I already had them
I bought 4 books in total for university and they were all in first year. If stuff wasn't in the books I used the internet or the course notes. Total spend can't have topped 100 quid
I got given £175 by Blackwell Books, didn't need any text books for the course (.pdf's from the uni library site, physical books in the library Cheesecake), ended up buying some Cisco texts with it, and a few other network security texts, which would have covered all three years of the course had it been what it was supposed to be - I still have about £30 left on the gift card..
I got my engineering text books off amazon, at about £4 per book! They're all (very) old editions, but the essential info is still there...
Not to sound all high and mighty, but for at least two of our six modules per year for the past 4 years, our lecturers have written or had a hand in writing the textbooks on the recommended reading list - so we get authors discount on them. For the rest, I just shopped around and found the best prices online. I think the most I ever spent on textbooks in one academic year (6 full and one half module) was just under £500. And that was a busy year.
Must depends on the subject. I've spent £100 on a couple of useless textbooks in first year, that I never read and from then on it's been the library and internet the whole way. Realised early on the recommended reading isn't critical (at least for what I do). There are dozens of other books that carry the exact same info so I just find one that's good and avoid the mile long queue on the reading list. >$1000 just isn't right.
Well here is an example of a book I am required to have. http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Numer...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281384302&sr=1-1 Read the second review and apply that to nearly all the books I have had to buy. One of my books (Calc I,II,III) was nearly $300. I ended up finding it online as a pdf after I lost my copy and downloading it since there was no way in hell I was going to buy it again.
MATLAAAAB the greatest hero of them all! The best way I thought is to borrow someone elses book / from library to check you *need* it first, then buy it if they get grumpy at you
when i went to uni i dont think i bought 1 book lol. i went to the library and loaned them for any work that i was currently doing. i also recieved lectureres note every lecture i had which was nice. There are 1 or 2 books i could have probably have done with but i managed oh and it was a BSc (hons) not a silly degree where you have 1 hour of lectures a week
I think in my 5 years at uni I spent about £80 in total on books! There was only two courses that actually required you to physically have a book. All other courses had recommended reading lists which were really just backup and further background reading on the course notes.
I use half.com for the textbooks I feel like buying. I usually only buy one or two per semester, depending on what I think I'll really need or read.
That is what I use as well but this years load will still cost about 850 from them. So far I have been going through the Half.com list and locating the books I need and finding the sellers close by (since there is a good chance they went to my Uni) to see if they say anything about not needing the book etc.
Tried to use library books for the first 3 years, then final year picked up copies of books i really needed to reference on a regular bases. Total Design by Pugh for instance retails at £62, absolute anal raping but i had saved up for it. I think total spent in 4 years was about £150 or so, mostly picked up off ebay or amazon 2nd hand, pugh being the only new book. I was lucky, my tutors/professors weren't stuck up c*nts, one actually photocopied all his notes and had them bound for us for free. Basically a free text book of everything he was covering that year! i do wish my course pushed me harder than it did though, most the time i winged it on my lucky common sense, where i would get caught out, with 'yeah your right, but where's the proof/reference?' err its Me!
