Are you currently in school or thinking of continuing your education? Are there textbooks you want or need to study, but you don’t think you can afford them or want to lug them around with you everywhere? Luckily with today’s technology it is easier, cheaper and faster to learn on the go; all you need is an eBook reader like the Kindle Fire or NOOK Touch and access to the Internet.

Keeping it Light and Inexpensive

Physical textbooks can be very bulky and expensive, and if you buy them used for a better price they can already have notes and highlighted passages in them that can make for distracting study sessions. You can avoid the bulk, the expense and the previous markings by purchasing and downloading e-Textbooks from Amazon’s Kindle store or Barnes & Noble’s NOOK store.

E-Learning with the Kindle Fire

With your Kindle Fire, you have access to many downloadable e-Textbooks for almost any subject you require at a fraction of the cost. When shopping for e-Textbooks on the Amazon store, you can download free samples of the first chapter of a textbook before deciding to either buy or rent. When you buy you can save up to 60 percent off the list price of a physical textbook; when you rent you can save up to 80 percent. With your Kindle Fire, you can highlight passages, bookmark important pages and take notes without needing anything other than your device. You can also sync all of your data with your other electronic devices, such as your Android phone or home computer, that have the Kindle app installed on them for easy access to study materials.

E-Learning with the NOOK Touch

The NOOK Touch is similar to the Kindle Fire when it comes to access to e-Textbooks, though there are some slight differences. Barnes & Noble offers a free NOOK Study app that gives you access to your all of your downloaded e-Textbooks without needing the Internet to view them. This NOOK Study app also allows you to highlight, bookmark and make notes as well as search the text for specific things you need to study. The Barnes & Noble NOOK store offers a seven-day free trial of all e-Textbooks, so you can get a feel for them as a whole before you buy or rent. Similar to Amazon, the NOOK store offers up to a 60 percent discount when buying these texts as well as a higher discount when renting.