Note: In my book's preface I mentioned that I might eventually write a second edition. That now looks very unlikely, since I've gone on to other interests. At present (September 2001), it looks unlikely that there will be a second edition before 2025, if ever. If you're considering buying the book, don't wait for the second edition. -- ES

Handbook of Analysis and its Foundations
Comparison of Print and CD-ROM Versions

Printed book version, ISBN 0126227608 CD-ROM version, ISBN 0126227659
Priced at $92.00 in the USA, according to AP web page -- at least, that was the price when I looked on 21 Feb 2000. Perhaps you can get a lower price from some other distributer. Priced at $74.95 in the USA, according to AP web page -- at least, that was the price when I looked on 21 Feb 2000. Perhaps you can get a lower price from some other distributer.
The printed version was published in October 1996. Apparently the CD-ROM version became available for purchase in August 1999. At least, that's when I received my copies.
The printed version has prettier typesetting. I typeset it myself using Latex, with careful planning about what would look good on the page. The publisher used my files and printed the book at 1200 dpi. The computer version uses html for the text and gif files for the math, in a 14-point font. A computer screen only has a resolution of something like 72 dpi, so you can't expect it to look as good as the book. -- The CD also contains a subfolder called "Pdf," containing pages that can be read using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. However, those pages do not give you electronic cross-referencing.
The book includes frequent cross-referencing -- i.e., a discussion in one part of the book will mention what other part of the book you should look at for some related topic. The HTML version makes this a little fancier: Each time that some other part of the book is mentioned, the phrase is an underlined link. Clicking on that link takes you to that part of the book. (But it doesn't take less time than turning to an appropriate page in a printed book.)
The printed book weighs a lot, so it is not convenient to pack in a suitcase when you travel, or even in a briefcase for trips between home and office. The CD-ROM version weighs less. One colleague of mine who frequently travels and takes his laptop computer with him is very pleased to be able to take my book along too.
The printed version has some errors in the index; you can compensate for them with a copy of my conversion table. The CD-ROM version doesn't have pages, but it still has an index, much more powerful than the one in the printed book. The book is divided into hundreds of sections, and the search will tell you which sections of the book contain a keyword that you specify. You can save the result of your search. Then you can mark several of your searches, and use "or" or "and" to combine those results. Combine this with Netscape's ordinary ability to Find (control-F) a specified word or phrase in a page that is on display, and you have a search engine much more powerful than the printed book's index.
The printed version is 883 + xxii pages long. The CD-ROM version has those same pages (with most errors corrected), plus an addendum chapter that would be about 30 pages if it were printed. The addendum contains a variety of things that I decided to add later; it is a bit more extensive (and certainly better formatted) than my on-line addendum. I may add an outline of the addendum chapter here after a while.

Further comments about the CD version: I found that the CD didn't really work on my old 25 megaherz 80486 computer, but that's hardly surprising -- it has only about 4 megabytes of RAM. It works adequately, though a bit slowly, on my child's old 70 mhz Pentium I computer, which has 16 megabytes of RAM. It works quite well on my family's 300 megaherz Pentium II. Sorry, I haven't tried it on a Macintosh; I'll try to do that soon and then update this page.

The CD's "READ_ME2.TXT" mentions these system requirements:

This product is written in HTML and JavaScript. As such, it should run on any modern browser. However, we recommend that your system
  • have at least 16 MByte of RAM
  • have a monitor resolution of at least 800-by-600
  • use Netscape 4.0 or higher
The gif files were created to be 14 points in size, so we recommend that you make the browser default text size also 14 points. Be sure that you have enabled both Java and JavaScript in your browser.