Practicing purity, abstinence, or waiting to get married are several of the primary reasons that college students are willing to give up dating and sex, but textbooks? As shocking as that may be, Kelton Research recently found in a survey that 73% of college students would give up anything – including saying no to sex if it meant avoiding one more textbook in their backpack. The study shows that 1 in 4 students carry over 20 pounds of books on an average day. However, that weight can be avoided with the use of Portable Documents Format (PDF). Most basic PDF viewers are free and an increasing number of textbooks are going digital for a fraction of the cost of their paper counterparts, which can range from $300-400 per semester.
In this continuing economic recession, the tuition rates grow year after year, where parents as well as kids are finding it harder to remain in school. Some of this difficulty seems to stem from the high cost of textbooks.
For 14 years, Nitro is one of the world’s leading providers of digital document software, with more than 50 million collective downloads of its free PDF solutions. The PDF format was conceived as a digital substitute for physical paper, reducing the cost as well as being environmentally friendly. As the firm Cleantech states, textbooks release more than two times the amount of carbon dioxide than the average book.
“There’s no substitute for textbooks” said Nick Chandler, Head of PR & Community at Nitro, “but it’s cost-effective; it’s an alternative. Prices vary from publisher to publisher, but they’re inherently less expensive because there’s no paper, printing, or distribution involved. Nitro Reader is also a free download, offering an Evernote integration that enables you to save your notes and documents to the cloud, so you can access them from any device, anywhere. It also facilitates more efficient collaboration; you can easily track multiple contributors and their comments. We’re just trying to provide a genuinely useful, free solution for anyone working with PDF files; its functionality and price-tag make it a great fit for students.”
Nitro provides some tips on cutting down costs at college, such as digitizing note-taking using a solution like Nitro Reader, and purchasing e-textbooks, which obviously translates into carrying less on campus. If you are using a fully featured PDF viewer, you can easily re-purpose text and images, store your school materials in the cloud, and collaborate easily online as a group.
As the school year begins in the coming weeks, Nitro is offering an exclusive “Back to School” on Nitro PDF Professional for the first two weeks of September (9/1-9/15) at a discount price of $49.99; simply use the discount code BACKTOSCHOOL.
More on these products can be found at www.nitropdf.com.
