Curt, you're right, googling for book titles is old style, thank you for the hint; I use FF, and there should be some other add-in for the "amazon button".
Also, thank you for completing my list with your remarks about shipping costs from amazon.com = U.S. to Europe, and which is another reason I'm so fond of the German inter-university-library lending system (cost per book: 1,50€, about 2,15$: I'm sure this is the best such system in Europe).
Of course, there would be the question to WHICH amazon those buttons would take you, and if then the amazon search line would be focussed. In fact, in my macro system, I have direct "buttons" (menus with shortcuts) to amazon.com/co.uk/de/fr, but the problem is, I have been too lazy to then script a mouse click into the search line (direct focus to website elements is a big flaw in AHK), so I must click manually, whilst in google and almost anywhere else, the search line is focussed automatically; of course, I don't go over the google page, but by direct one-key to the browser search line, but I acknowledge my current system, for amazon, isn't ideal, especially since after that (very quick) first amazon page, I then have to "surf" to other amazon pages anyway.
This being said, there is that above-described risk of getting, by google, to "bad" amazon pages, and I'm not sure using "buy from amazon buttons" will overcome that problem; as said, even from within amazon, you sometimes get "bad" pages...
"Nächstenliebe", well, I find wrong translations, too, from altruism to charity, but there is a problem. I know exactly what you mean, i.e. a minimum of loyalty, of "deliberate thrustworthyness beyond what the law imposes on you", of "deliberate interest in the real interest of the customer" (vs. alleged interest which at the end of the day is the interest of the seller/marketplace), of "solidarity with the other party's interests", but "Nächstenliebe" is rarely used these times, in German, and exclusively with regards to real and wrong charity, i.e. with regards to voluntary work with homeless people or elderly in institutions and such, and also, wrongly, with regards to charity "galas" where rich people give to charity - hence the problems of today's dictionaries: Their lack of applying translations just mirror the fact that this term has almost vanished from the German language, except for this receded use, and most of the time you'll hear this word, it'll be with respect to "Mother Teresa" anyway (i.e. improper use if you know about the background and details of her work...)
This being said, 90 p.c. of the time, I use the different amazon sites for my bibliography needs, before then searching the inter-library system anyway, and not for buying; I have to say that without to that exceptionally good system, i.e. in (most?) other countries, this would probably be quite different.
I missed another aspect of the amazon world: E-books and their prices.
sideline: The German book market in general.
In Germany, both book and e-book prices are bound by law, which means that the respective publisher sets the price, then everybody, for "new" books/e-books at least (see above for "new" vs. "really used" vs. "allegedly used"), must neither call for higher (! see the pdf, and the alleged "used" state in there), nor for lower prices. This means, for the German book market, that the big players, i.e. amazon, but also the big "chains" (which also sell by internet, but which mainly are present in the best parts of the big cities) will make tremendous benefits, on the detriment of the "nice little bookstore", which today are gone for the most of them: In those German cities I know, more than 80 p.c. of them have closed.
Why is this so? There's a very precise reason to it: The big players, amazon et al, get about 60 to 65 p.c. off that "bound" price from the respective publishers, whilst the "little bookstore" just gets 30 to 35 p.c. off that same price (and most of the time, it's not more like 29 p.c. instead of 32 or more), either from the publisher or from some intermediate which in turn gets the full 65 p.c. from the publisher...
So why are there intermediates, to begin with? Those, which are called "Barsortiment(er)" (()=plural), store any book from big publishers, and deliver them, to the bookstore, the next day, whilst from the publisher (= same price for the bookstore), that would take anything from some days to 6 weeks (= publishers kicking away bookstores this way, in spite of the fact it would have been in the publisher's interest to deliver directly!) - of course, the "customer experience" is quite different between "next day" and "somewhere in the future".
The attentive reader will have become aware of my saying, "store any book from big publishers": bingo! And this means many bookstore will tell you, "this book doesn't exist", whenever you ask them for a book from some little publisher, since they do not want to command it from them, and the intermediates refuse to stock them for immediate delivery (notwithstanding the fact the little publisher is "willing" to give them their 65 p.c. off final price).
Of course, the German government tells people lots of rubbish about this (as for any subject there is), in the line of "the bound price preserve the little bookstore", which is a big lie in light of the above: It would HAVE been true if not just the end/customer price was bound, but if the purchase price was identical for every reseller was identical, too, and so, as with many other things, German legislation is just bound to play the play of the big players, little bookstores being the victims of this policy as well as every reader in Germany... ;-)
Now for those e-book prices:
From the U.S., you know that a book might cost 30$, with the e-book costing about 9$, this price difference being much smaller for textbooks, though, but then, it's perhaps 30$ vs. 18$. As said above, amazon.com e-books are not available for European customers.
Now in Germany (similar in France), when the book is 30.95€, the e-book is 28.95 euro, or 29.45€, and that applies to almost any e-book sold in Germany, being it a translation, or be it written in German (so there are no "hidden costs" to be "covered", it's just plain greed).
And this means that in Europe, you should always have a look at amazon.co.uk, and search for the English version of the e-book, the latter often being available on Continental amazon sites, too, perhaps at slightly higher prices but which in any case are not as cheap as on amazon.com (the TVA on books in Germany is currently 7 p.c., on e-books it's been 19 p.c., but I think they changed that, or are willing to do so? Anyway, that doesn't explain a price difference of merely 5 or 7 p.c. to the bound book).
Which arises an additional question: Are there alternative U.S. e-book sources, priced as amazon.com, but from thich the e-books are available to European customers? (Of course, we then don't speak of the Kindle format here, but who cares? With all due respect, I looked at Kindle's, and was far from delighted!) But this alternative availability to Europe could be prevented for legal reasons, i.e. U.S. publishers sell the "Oversea's right" to their Irish-tax-free subsidiary, and which then is the sole proprietor of those European rights, incl. e-book rights, and they are free to sell at some price they deem suitable for European "customers". (Just compare Adobe sw prices in Europe with their respective U.S. counterparts.)
I spoke about "importing goods" in some other thread, some weeks ago, and there's a base problem, but which seems to be connected to such "rights for different territories" considerations:
There currently is no U.S. reseller who's got a daily (or, in the beginning, weekly) container shipped to Europe, and with prices 10 p.c. above the U.S. price plus taxes (neither there is for electronics goods and such, so we pay twice the price here, sometimes thrice the price).
And, to say it all, even sharing transportations costs from the U.S. to Europe, once a month, for some fellow customer group, would only be realistic within a big country like Germany, since even within Europe, from one country to the next, D to DK, B to F, A to CH, will cost another fortune in additional transportation costs: The whole "European Union" is just there in order to ripp off hundreds of millions of "innocent" people not seeing that once in while, they could stop this never-ending outrage from which citizens don't have but big disadvantages... DK at least having been smart enough to preserve its money... and they don't exclusively vote for perverted cynics up there neither: kudos to DK for preserving your common sense! (Whilst German electorate is an abomination.)
Ok, this thread was meant to be about hints to better buy pc books, sw and electronics... but from the above, you will have understood why I so much praise the German inter-university book lending system: Any book I get from there is a book I wasn't totally ripped off for. (And btw, in the Scandinavian countries, book prices are even more obscene than on the Continent.)
