In January, Amazon started giving students (those with a .edu email address) a free Prime membership, which included free shipping and discounted overnight shipping (but didn't allow sharing with other family members). Then, in February, Amazon started giving free, unlimited streaming instant videos with Prime Membership. But, students were left out in the cold (as were Amazon Moms, who also have free Prime shipping, if they meet certain monthly qualifications).Now, though, students get a new choice: upgrade to full Prime membership at 50% off the regular rate and get streaming Instant Videos. It's the perfect solution for the cash-strapped student that could not talk Mom and Dad out of letting their dorm room be the primary location on the account (with Full Prime, you can have up to 5 members on an account, but only one of them gets streaming videos for free). For $39/year, students can watch all the videos they have time for, get munchies (or clean clothes) delivered quickly and get release date delivery on video games, DVD's, books and more. If you aren't a student, you can get the same for the regular $79/year (which is still cheaper than a streaming only Netflix membership).
There are a couple of gotcha's:
- If you are already a free Student Prime member, your free period ends immediately (even if you have several months left on it) and your annual membership will begin (with a new expiration date).
- You can only be a paid Student Prime member for four years and at the end of four years, your membership cost will automatically increase. That's also true of the free membership, btw -- you can only be a student for four years with Amazon, no matter how long you actually take to graduate.
- You still don't get to share your membership with someone else. Amazon Moms can share their membership with one other person and full paid accounts can share with up to 4 household members or coworkers.
But, wait, you say... what was that you said about Textbook Rentals?Yes, it's true. Amazon has finally added the ability to rent the Kindle edition of textbooks, a feature that Barnes & Noble added last year (but which is kind of a mess to use, what with the special student version of the reader for your desktop). Amazon, of course, makes it all easy - any book that can be rented now has the option to rent (it's even the default, so be careful with this one), with rental periods lasting from 30 days to nearly a year (depending on the book). The amount you pay depends on both the cost of the book and the length of the rental period. Once rented and for the duration of the rental period, you can then read that book on any of your registered Kindle devices, including on your desktop (or iPad ... or phone, if you need to, ahem, "check your notes" in class). Even after the rental period is over, you can still access your notes (all your notes, not just for textbooks) online, at kindle.amazon.com.
Need that book just a little bit longer? You can extend your rental period as needed, for as little as a single day (as many times as you want), or convert the rental to a purchase. Essentially, you get many of the benefits of selling back your textbooks at the end of the term, without the hassle of having to lug them around and then deal with shipping them off. And you keep your notes and highlights (unlike when you sell back that Chemistry book you find you now need).
I still have a few questions on how it works and the help pages at Amazon are not updated yet (not even for paid Student Prime), so I've sent off an email to Amazon and will let you know what I hear.
