Cool! I like the "Try Demo" option. Unlike other eReaders on the iPhone, the pages look like real textbooks. You need to zoom in to read them, but the charts and images look great. The thumbnails are an interesting way to choose a book or page in the book.

Great to flip through full color book. On the iPhone it feels like a real book. No more lugging 1000 page books. Is there a way to write notes in the margin or underline? That would make it even better.

You mean I don't half to carry around 50 pounds of txt books anymore? I usually carry my phone around more then my laptop and now I can always make sure I can access my books.

This app is does a great job of being what it should and shouldn't be. Rather than trying to replace your textbook, its the right compliment to it. The search tool is intuitive, so when you need to reference something quickly and don't have your book or laptop handy this app does what you need. I'll be using this going forward for sure.

Very cool app. I signed right into my account and could easily access all of my books. I love the search function. Within seconds I could get exactly what I was looking for... and from my iPhone! The pages look small but you can use fingers to zoom in on what you're looking for.

All in all this is a good app and more importantly it gets rid of those heavy books, while not all my books are on course smart most are so it makes it easier for me especially when my school bookstore charges to much money for a book. The only thing I would really suggest to the developers is to bring a better zoom functionality when tapping an area of the book, I just hate having to pinch and zoom, it can be a hassle sometime. Fix this and this is a 5 Star App.

Kindle is nice but it makes tons of sense to put books on a platform (iPhone) already in the hands of millions of people. When itablet is released, this will be even sweeter. Then just about the only thing kindle has going for it is battery life.

Now I can access all my text ebooks and keep them right in my pocket! This is great. The show ruler feature is a little extraneous. How about a highligher feature instead? Five stars in anycase. This will come in very handy this fall.

More and more students carry laptops or netbooks around campus, and using CourseSmart on the web and with a laptop isn't a bad way to go. But CourseSmart on the iPhone has too many problems to be particularly useful.

Excellent idea, especially for those of us who have already purchased CourseSmart eBooks. However, the application is essentially unusable in its current state. The application frequently hangs and page load times even over WiFi are unacceptable. Disappointing.

1) pages are hard to read. 2) tapping a column of text should expand to fit the screen. 3) should be able swipe the screen to navigate in the book.

Putting the whole actual textbook on the phone in the original format is suboptimal.

Some are giving this app a bad review for reasons unrelated to the app itself (e.g., rent vs. buy, price of books). I've been wanting Coursesmart to bring iPhone compatibility for a long time so I downloaded this as soon as I heard about it. I still had one textbook from last semester that still was an active subscription. Testing this book in this app was a complete failure. On all pages that I tried to view, only the top third of the page showed up. Others are clamoring for more features but I would like Coursesmart to get at least the main feature to work properly. In its current state this app is useless.

eTextbooks cost way to much money!!!!! I can go to any book story and buy a book (Chemistry Demystified maybe?) to help me learn Chemistry for only $19.95. A real book I can hold in my hands, takes notes and highlight in. Why is the electronic version of books alway so high? If you really wanted to make some money, try selling them for somewhere between $3 and $5. Until you do, I can find the PDF copy online for free that I will be happy to use. I can't give you the links (Apple Lawyers), but just try googling for ebooks and you'll find all kinds of sites you can download them from. I know they will not be as nice or have as many pretty pictures, but for free, I can learn a heck of a lot on the go. You also need an app like Stanza (a free app) to help you read them.

Takes about 5 seconds to turn pages, 3G or WiFi. So far looks like it's viewing only. You can't make notes etc., but can see previous notes. Some of the pages are a bit blurred when you zoom. A big problem is that some pages don't display fully. Text doesn't format to size of iPhone screen which makes reading difficult. This app just came out, so I imagine they'll fix some of these problems when schools start up this month and they start to hear complaints.

This app is great EXCEPT... The biggest thing preventing me from studying is not being able to highlight text or take notes. Please add these features and it will be perfect!

(1)The controls are not available in landscape mode. In portrait mode the pages are too small to read, so you have to zoom. But then you have scroll left and right to read. In landscape mode you can read the page, but you have to rotate back to portrait mode to go to the next page. (2) On my iPhone 3Gs with a 3g signal it takes 10-15 seconds to load a page! So after every page you have to wait 15 seconds for the next page to display. This is incredibly annoying and makes reading a painful process. (3) it does not remember the page you were on, so you have to remember and manually navigate to the page you last read.

Great resource for reference on the go. Nice to have multiple books available anywhere at anytime. Easy to navigate and read.

Controls from landscape mode Shorter load time by preloading next page Remembering last page viewed Search refining options (by different criteria than just relevance)

I agree with "college professor" that eTextbooks has problems in version 1.0. However, if the textbook is formated as 2 columns per page, then in landscape you can zoom in on a column and easily read it without having to scroll left to right. As a professor, I have a number of textbooks in My Bookshelf and only 6 of them show on the eTextbook home page and none of these 6 include the 2 textbooks I am using this semester. I have contacted CourseSmart customer service about this problem, but no resolution after a week. I hope CourseSmart will release an updated version in the near future that fixes the problems mentioned by "college professor."

First of all, I think it was a great effort from coursesmart to develop an app. I really find it useful since I carry my ipod touch with me everywhere I go and in my city, we have wifi in almost every place. It didn't look like a bad app to me. At home, with my N-wireless I went front one page to the next in 3 seconds. This will definetely come handy. It's not the best app but it's not the worst either. I say you try it. (iPhone folks, don't take my words since I only tested on my ipod touch on a close-range wifi).

It takes 7 seconds on my 3G S to render each page of my textbook which is a killer time waste. All of the pages have to be manually resized so that you can read them - another time waste. This may not sound like a big deal but we're talking about 1500 page textbooks here. You would spend 3 hours just WAITING for each page to load if you read a 1500 page textbook from front to back. On top of that you have to spend several seconds adjusting the page so that you can actually read the text. Also, you can't change pages in horizontal mode - another time waste. You're forced to see the UI in vertical mode. Fortunately for me, I can delete this app from my phone and use CourseSmart's website for the rest of the semester. To make this app even remotely worth while CourseSmart needs to take a page from ebooks and allow for text resizing on the fly. Good luck.

It would make my life a lot easier if it did. My main isssue is that the text is barely readable, even in landscape mode. Definitely need to be able to ZOOM a lot more than is possible at present.

The app won't recognize the wifi though connected. Help chat had to escalate issue and that will take 48 hours. Bottom line, use safari to access online books.

I give it 3 out of 5 because it's almost there. I love having a searchable ebook. I love not having to carry all my books around. I love that so far the books I've purchased are less than half the price than at my college bookstore, so I'm saving money. However, there are a few ANNOYING bugs to be fixed: 1: In the 'go-to' menu, thumbnails will often not appear. 2: In the 'go-to' menu, pages will often repeat themselves. 3: When viewing a page, clicking the arrow to take me to the next page sometimes skips several pages. 4: Clicking on a thumbnail won't always take me to that page; it sometimes takes me to a different page. Fix these & I'm sure you'll get more 5-star ratings.

Was handy before but slow - my books load much faster now! It also seems like I can turn pages faster.

I had just bought a book on Coursesmart and was trying to get it on my iPhone like crazy until I found out from engadget that they had an iPhone app, super life saver!!!!

I love the fact I can read my esubs on my iPhone! Makes it soooo convenient that even if I didn't bring my netbook, I still have access! I wish the highlight feature would be there. It would be cool too if we can just turn pages with a flick of a finger or slide a finger across. I personally don't mind that I have to zoom and unzoom, but I do see that it can be an annoyance to some if they're dealing with small pics that are so detailed and stuff and they have no choice but to zoom in and out. I suppose the programmers would have to come up with a creative idea to handle that or something. Other than that, I really don't have much to criticize about.  im just real glad i can read my esubs virtually anywhere and anytime!

new version is much faster! love the landscape mode.