I'm a huge fan of the Safari service by O'reilly. The way it is currently set up, you pay a monthly fee for a bookshelf. That bookshelf has a capacity of books in multiples of 10 based on your subscription fee. For each book that you put on your shelf, it has to remain there for at least 30 days. You can read the book online at any time, and all or most of the O'reilly books in print are available. Sounds complicated right? This month, safari is launching a new Library producted without all the funky math. You get any book at any time without limitation.
The intro cost is about $40/month, with the retail cost being about $50/month. A little on the high side, but I use safari almost daily when I am coding and it is an invaluable resource. No waiting for books to arrive from Amazon and you can cut/paste code examples directly from the website.
All in all, I think this is a great deal. I've had problems in the past with the speed of the Safari service, but it seems to me that they have straightened all of that out, because it has been blazing fast for me.
You also get download tokens so that you can take chapters of books offline in pdf format, access to new books as they are being written and discounts on print versions of books.
I probably should join their affiliate program as I'm turning into an evangelist for the product. Safari and UltraEdit are two things that I will never regret spending money on.
Keep an eye out for the product launch. It will probably hit slashdot. They say that the release should be sometime this month.
What visitors have to say about Safari to Launch Library
