I feel that book is good if you have enough time to learn technology completely.
But in this rapidly changing technology world, by the time you finish
J2EE, there is JEE.
Here internet comes handy and good for quick start. Ctrl+F is nice feature in digital books (faster than index).
Net material and digital books saves lot of time and money.
I buy books that are not available on net and really worth to invest money.
From last eight years I bought only 2 books, SCJP-MIE and then Mastering EJB- Ed Roman both were worth investing money.
Mastering EJB I read 50% on print and 50% on my system.
Other technologies like
Struts, hibernate, spring, WLS, glassfish, axis, design
patterns, UML etc. I never felt to buy book.
Google is good enough to save money and time. It provides me quick links to blog /tutorial etc for information, which I am looking for.