A $129.99 book is considered a pittance to pay for someone who needs to design displays for control operators, compared to the benefits derived from reading the book.

That's the opinion of Perceptual Edge founder Stephen Few who is running a consultancy that helps design simple information displays for effective analysis and communication.

Few puts out a monthly Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter, teaches in the MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley and has penned a comprehensive and practical guide to business graphics entitled "Show Me the Numbers" and a guide to the visual design of dashboards, entitled "Information Dashboard Design".

In a blog entry, Few has some kind words to say about "The high performance HMI Handbook", a book that provides design guidance specifically for Human Machine Interface displays that are used by control operators in industrial plants.

Think it's worth the money? In the Internet age, can one get similar info on the Web, or do we still need that info in one bound book?