Books Or DVD

[pinktooth]

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Hi Folks,
I am an International dental student at BUSDM and we are given an option between books and a DVD containing all the dental books for four years.
I have till friday to make a decision.Could you please share your opinions .
thanks

 

[ItsGavinC]

Books because there will be many classes where you probably won't even need the text, or can purchase it from other students.

With the DVD you are stuck with it, even if you don't ever use the books (which is quite likely). The DVD is one of the biggest scams in dental education history, in my opinion.

 

[Dr.SpongeBobDDS]

The DVD would be nice, but I am the kind of guy who likes to spread all my stuff out on the floor with a pillow and study. I want to have five books open at once with class notes scattered around and the ability to highlight with three different colors. I know you can do this in theory with the DVD, but to me it just wouldn't be the same. I also think I would get tired of looking at a computer screen for so long.

The only advantage I can see to the DVD is not needing to lug books around all the time. If it were me I would definitely get the books.

 

[DDSSlave]

I'd go with the books. I rarely used anything but class notes to study for tests, so I'd rather pick and choose my books rather than having to buy them all on one dvd.

 

[Col Sanders]

DVD all the way, for me. I agree it takes getting used to studying off of a computer screen, but its the only way I study now. 95% of texts are for reference only anyways. I always have all my texts with me. The search function is tremendous. I would like the DVD even more if we got to pick the individual books on the DVD. We did a survey of all the students at our school and 2/3 said they preferred the DVD to regular texts. I was amazed to see the stat because we have some very vocal people who dislike it and I thought it would be the other way around, but it turns out most people embrace the idea after having tried both.

 

[WildcatDMD]

I just gave my opinion on this in the pre-dental forum under the BU thread.

 

[DDSSlave]

Also keep in mind the only books you're likely to reference as a dentist are dental related texts and not basic science.

 

[kato999]

i would go books. you can sell them back to the underclassmen. with vitalcrap you pay 1500 a year for four years with no chance of that. not sure what you guys have to pay, but i would take that into consideration. the search feature is handy but in my opinion it does not make it worth the hefty cost.

also, we have to pay an additional 1800 yearly content licensing fee, still don't know what that goes toward.

 

[toothcaries]

buy books.

i'm with ItsGavinC..
..from far away, those dvd programs look like a waste of money.

 

[UBTom]

My class used Vitalbook since its very first trial edition in 2000.

It has improved much over four years... But I still recommend buying paper books if you have the option. It's much much cheaper to just buy the few paper texts that you will need, and I'm not sure if the portability of Vitalbook is a worthy tradeoff for the extra thousands of dollars.

HTH.

 

[ItsGavinC]

It's much much cheaper to just buy the few paper texts that you will need, and I'm not sure if the portability of Vitalbook is a worthy tradeoff for the extra thousands of dollars.

HTH.

My point exactly. Buy only the books you need and then sell back the ones you don't want to keep, versus being forced to fork out $6,000 on books that you'll never use during dental school and rarely use during practice.

 

[O'neill]

There is one other major advantage of the DVD that no one is considering, you can surf the internet during class and the lecturer has no way of knowing that you aren't paying attention and taking notes

 

[gryffindor]

There is one other major advantage of the DVD that no one is considering, you can surf the internet during class and the lecturer has no way of knowing that you aren't paying attention and taking notes

Yeah, but you don't need to buy the VitalBook DVD to do this, you just need a laptop with airport capabilities. My opinion, save the $6000 from paying the VitalCrap fees and go with textbooks instead. You can always sell textbooks to unsuspecting underclassmen if you decide you don't want the book, can't do that with VitalBook. You can use the $6000 to buy a nice laptop and still surf the net and IM in class.

 

[pinktooth]

Thanks a lot to all of you for sharing you opinions.
I have decided to go for the books .
thanks once again 🙂