!advert
To all indian ranters, print your pdf programming literature using printster.in or from there mobile app, prices are really cheap.

Why would you need to print them out?

I would recommend getting a Kindle instead of printing.

They last really long (still using an old model with buttons, no touchscreen), save your eyes, and you can carry tons of books in one. Also, doesn't waste paper.

Easily one of the best investments you can make.

@JoshBent some college level textbooks and some other important material is worth printing and spending the whole day in college literally drains you and you just can't spend any more time on a electronic screen.

@RememberMe in india, that's not much but still a little expensive. A lot of people can buy a phone in that amount which can do much more.

@faptain I'm Indian too :)
And that's wrong, if I may say so.

The base model is for 6k, right.

I've had my Kindle for at least five years, and it's been around for a while more than that (dad used it before I did). So we're looking at a cost of lesser than 1k per year. People easily spend more than that or about that on eating out per month. Distributing a cost of 1k over 12 months? That's about 84 rupees a month, rounding up. Someone who can afford to go to college and use the internet and buy a phone can easily spend 84 rupees (1.21 USD) a month for something that saves their eyes and gives easy access to so much written material. You literally spend more eating out once/twice.

(NB: taking interest rates and inflation into account the average *real* cost per month rises to about 94. Still viable).

Also, given that an average phone lasts about 3 years of heavy use, having a Kindle is like spending 3k more on a phone (because it lasts about twice as long). Still not worth it?

@RememberMe that's very well thought, but hey some books are freeely available as a pdf, legally. Can kindle reflow pdfs?

@faptain you can read pdfs, yes. Also epubs and MOBI. Use Calibre (it's FOSS) to convert and manage your books.

However it is true that sometimes things like equations or code gets a bit fucked up on the Kindle screen. PDFs are *usually* okay when converted via Calibre to MOBI or something, but YMMV. Read up online if it'll be a problem for you, for me I had the occasional annoyance but nothing really deal-breaking. As a general rule, text is fine, code is usually fine (may fuck up formatting a bit), equations are okayish but fuck up sometimes, and diagrams and large pictures may not get rendered so well especially if they rely on colours with poor differentiation in BW. Though I have a really old one, newer touchscreen ones work much better with pdf directly.

I'm not saying the Kindle is a viable alternative to printing for everything, but for most things it works well yeah. I used it to study in college.

@RememberMe i did a bit of searching around, i think this can be a very nice investment. A lot of people here are saying to go for kindle.

@RememberMe i didn't saved much tho, i printed think python, printed book on amazon is shit as it's losing many pages, there its around 250, and from printster it costed 140 so yea not much of savings i guess. Kindle is cool, no stack books to worry about. Saving trees as well.