Hi,

For basic programming, I am still using the ones that I have bought on 2001 (simple AWT-later-Swing applications, trees, Network and some threads). They are not so obsolate. However, the best library is the web and the sun tutorials. If you check a little bit in the sun tutorials you will realise that the explanations are very similar (if not equal) to the official books (the case for JNI, Threads, Swing, etc).

bye,

MArcelo

PS: There are some free e-books on the web for java programming

I still use my old reference material from 2000/2001 because I know where
everything is. If you are serious about learning Java, it wouldn't hurt to
invest in more modern literature.  O'Reilly books are great for reference
and learning.  For advanced more specific topics, O'Reilly's stack is
lacking on some topics, so I turn to Manning Publications.  Good luck.
Java is a great language/platform for modern development.  I make a good
living doing it.

see the list at http://mindprod.com/javareleasedates.html
to see when various Java releases were done.

1.1 added a totally new event model, using Listeners. This is the
level Microsoft has trapped many of its customers at. 1996-01
1.2 added ArrayList and other Collections.  1998-12-04
1.3 added Swing. 2000-05-08
1.4 added regexes, assertions and nio. 2002-02-13
1.5 added generics, enumerations and annotations. 2004-09-29

From that you can guess what HAS to be missing and what might be
missing.

Seems odd that JDK 1.5 has been out for over a year and people still
think of it as "new" and scary, even though it has had 6 revisions.