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Yeah, and not all those for sale on-line are the current versions. Buyers should be careful. it matters not to the instructor (or PADI) from where you purchase the training material, so long as they are current versions. It likely matters to a dive shop that sells the materials, but we are talking about standards, not profits.
If it is a current, new/unused book then it is certainly acceptable by standards. Now, don't be surprised if you get an odd look or pushback from an operator about sourcing the materials somewhere else, as sales of those materials are part of their business model. Frankly, I am lucky to cover pool and instructor costs with what I collect for the pool portion. It is the eLearning revenue share and some initial gear sales (student discount) of mask, snorkel, boots, fins that actually pays some bills and overhead. That scenario hasn't come up for me, but I wouldn't turn someone away for that reason. The closest I came to that was a PADI Instructor in another part of the country that wanted to send me a relative for training that would buy the eLearning from them rather than from me. Now that one I did give some push back on. Fair is fair.
I had to go check since it was 12 years ago. I did the Advanced Adventure fairly early on but then I went ahead and took a number of certs without counting the advanced adventure dives again since I wanted to max the number of dives I did and training I got. Somewhere along the way I got the Advanced card while on a trip in Florida. Both were SDI.
12 different published dates? Amazing--but believable. We got into a discussion elsewhere about EFR changes, etc. I agree with you and others that it's best to be current/up to date on everything. Sometimes I do get the feeling that changes occur for the sake of change. Not just referring to scuba. Now you can STREAM all your favourite episodes of __________, as opposed to just watching them (same thing, no?). I know tech. diving can get quite complicated, but other than major equipment changes (like BCs, SPGs, DCs), rec. diving seems pretty straight forward to me. About 3 years ago a few OW skills were added--one was actually dropping weights in the pool (I think) so a student knows what the buoyancy feels like, another was adjusting a buddy's tank band after slippage. Funny I was able to do that with no training when my fellow OW buddy's tank slipped in 2007.
