Chris's Random Ramblings
I've found that most programming/technical books I get have a pretty short shelf life (ie you read them once and refer to them a few times and then they sit on the bookshelf getting dusty). Its also pretty hard to get hold of them in Canberra and since quite a few of them out there seem to be quite dodgy I don't like to order them without being able to have a look at them first. tpot blogged about O'Reilly's Safari a while back and I thought I'd give it a go.
Safari provides you with a virtual bookshelf, the number of books that fit depending on how much you pay per month. You can swap books on and off your bookshelf, but each book must remain on your bookshelf for at least 30 days. By default you can only read the book whilst connected to the internet (html), but some of the plans also allow you download a certain number of chapters as PDF files per month. Extra chapters can be downloaded at about US$2 each.
So far my experience of it has been pretty good. You do need a pretty fast connection to the internet. But I'm reading books such as those on HDTV or developing on SymbianOS that I normally wouldn't buy. And I've found its useful in cases where I'm only interested in reading a chapter or two out of a book. I'm planning on downloading PDF versions of those books which I keep for reference purposes.