Part of the reality of life working the Web (besides eyestrain, unrealistic deadlines, rampant coffee breath, and bewildered clients, that is) is the fact that the Web presents a constant learning process.

There’s always new, fast-spreading technologies to learn, freshly spun techniques to master, and the inevitable software upgrades to manhandle.

In the last six months there’s been new versions of Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Fireworks, Cleaner, and other major software packages released. PHP was updated a bunch of times. Flash introduced a new, more robust version of Actionscript. XML, RSS, and RDF was added into the alphabet soup that is my brain. Mac OS X was upgraded and got even better.

Throughout all of this, I bought books. I rely on books to help me keep up with the march of technology, and now that I’m teaching a lot of this, I rely on them even more. But I’m getting a ton of old books for old versions of software and programming languages that are now, basically, obsolete. What to do with them?

I wish more book publishers did what Ted Landau is doing with his excellent Mac OS X Disaster Relief. Now that the latest version of OS X has been released, Mr. Landau is releasing an update to the book, available free on his Web site.

If more book publishers offered “upgrades” to their books for a reduced price (or free), just as Mr. Landau offers for his book, and software producers offer for their products, I would be a happy man. And book buyers wouldn’t have to keep tossing books in the recycling bin.

Anyone have a need for old computer books?