On perusing my Lifehacker RSS stream, I found two great little things that could save returning students some cash…

With the cost of books rising, there’s no denying that students have to buy them as they are the lifeblood of their studies. Lifehacker linked a great article by Smart Money with their 4 tips to save money on books as well as a mention that Congress is stepping in to intervene with the skyrocketing cost of texts. The eBooks that some publishers are offering is pretty new as eReader devices such as Sony’s eInk book or Amazon’s Kindle have been wildly popular lately or even just reading via PDF on laptops. Caveat emptor, some of these publishers do have DRM (digital rights management) on their eBooks which may prove difficult should you have a mishap with your computer involving your digital copy. Price shopping and textbook rentals are still stable techniques that are “old world” but still work for today’s masses, while effective, it does rely on the live market especially with regard to used texts. Their last tip was rather interesting… Subsidized or open source textbooks.  Freeload Press offers their texts at free or low cost while allowing authors to advertise their works on their site as ad banners or ads on the footer/header of the eBook pages in addition to allowing users to buy printed editions at a very low price. I will say that their mention of Project Gutenberg was a very worthy one as I know in my early years I easily spend $100+ in extra texts I had to buy from Barnes & Noble, Half Price Books, et al before the project became what it is now. If you’re still on the fence about buying your books, check the article out.

Lastly… I remember about this time last year that my buddy Tyler had said that he was in a business computer class and that they made it a “requirement” to have Microsoft Office 2007 which had him in a bit of a rut as he was hard up for cash. Lucky for him though, he had a friend who did work for Microsoft and got him hooked up with a copy for free. Most students, however, are not quite this lucky. Some schools, like Texas A&M Commerce will deny any rendering of aid should your machine be found with any counterfeit/pirated software so “keeping legal” is terribly vital for some students. Microsoft has devised a solution to keep students within the legal standing of the law rather than to be an agent of software piracy with their deal called “The Ultimate Steal“. Right now, Microsoft only has Office Professional 2007 for about $60 which is “91% off ERP” for a digital download with the option to also by a physical disc. They do have some other deals that will be coming around September, like their upgrade copy of Windows Vista Ultimate for $65 (which can be used as a full install disc) for those that do need a legit copy of an operating system. I typically would say use Linux or Open Office, but sometimes when a school imposes on your freedoms with little recourse, it’s a tad frustrating to pay the price…