As a grad student, I have found that the use of half.com and ebay have reduced my expenditure on textbooks and supplies by nearly three hundred dollars per semester. I have almost always, in four years of buying online, found my textbook online, for sometimes less than a third of what I might pay at the campus bookstore. I have been able to buy a TI-83, other scientific caluculators, and general school supplies on the site. I don't always use it for business, though. I've found video games, PC games and other ways to avoid doing my homework as well. As a whole, using this site is quite easy. I have found that I tend to need one to two weeks for delivery, or about one week if I expedite shipping. In a general sense, everything I order comes in within that time. I've even had things delivered after as little as two days. Some of these shippers are serious when you ask for expedited shipping.

If you can email your professor, sometimes you can ask for a copy of your textbook list early, meaning that you can have your books in the first week. The usual reason students with credit cards (and that's almost everyone these days) don't use the net is that they're afraid to