I'm working on (at least) three big Java projects this summer. None will be using WebObjects, so I'm coming up to speed on a number of modern open-source Java tools. I was in Orange County for training last week, and decided I need a new bookshelf for these tools.

Disturbingly, most of the books I wanted were full price on amazon.ca, so despite free shipping, it was cheaper to buy them on amazon.com, have them shipped overnight to where I was staying in Orange County, and risk paying duties and taxes when I crossed the border than it was to buy them on amazon.ca. (The prices on chapters.ca were similarly bad) Even the books that did have discounts on amazon.ca were still prohibitively more expensive than on amazon.com. Absolutely ridiculous. I emailed amazon.ca a few weeks ago to complain DVDs were cheaper at local retail stores... I think I'll email them again about this. What's the point of amazon.ca if the goods are at MSRP?

Here are the books I brought back with me...

• AspectJ in Action: Practical Aspect-Oriented Programming
• Better, Faster, Lighter Java
• Hibernate in Action
• Java Development with Ant
• JUnit Recipes : Practical Methods for Programmer Testing
• Spring: A Developer's Notebook
• Spring in Action
• Tapestry in Action
• XDoclet in Action

I started reading 'Spring: A Developer's Notebook' immediately. I like the format, and I'm grokking Spring. Dependency Injection is a good thing. I need to get started with Hibernate and Tapestry ASAP though.

We'll probably be using Eclipse as our IDE, but I'm evaluating IntelliJ IDEA. So far I really like it. Not sure if I'd recommend it over Eclipse yet, given the cost difference. It must not be easy being a commercial Java IDE developer these days! If you're using IDEA, or some other cross-platform Java IDE (sorry, Xcode need not apply), can you tell me why you prefer it over Eclipse?