Book
Review of: |
 The
results of checking out software to review for PC Alamode never ceases
to amaze me. This month it fell my lot to have my name drawn last, not
dead last, but almost. Larry had a really wonderful selection of "stuff"
to review and I was really excited about the possibility of choosing one
out of about a half dozen items that really interested me. As names were
drawn, those ahead of me consistently selected each item that I had coveted
most. (I do look forward to reading their reviews.) By the time my name
was drawn my frame of mind was one of major disappointment, but I selected
a book that I thought might round out my technical library and maybe educate
me.
As I headed back to the meeting, Joe Barth spotted my selection and asked if I had a "Dummies" book. I said "No, that was two years ago, I have graduated to the ‘Idiot’ books". I still was not sure that I had made a wise decision but now, a week later, I know that I made an excellent choice. For one thing this book is new, very new, and so it has the latest possible information. Another reason that I know that I made an excellent choice is that I have another book purchased several months ago with almost the same name that covers the same topic and it is interesting to see the difference. The first thing that confronted me when I opened the front cover of this book was a tear out card that has a Quick Fix Guide listing problems and which chapter has information related to each problem. The Table of Contents appears twice; the Contents at a Glance lists the 4 parts of the book and the two or more chapters that occur in each part; and the second Table of Contents lists each chapter with the topics and page number for each topic. This makes it extremely easy to quickly find the exact location for whatever information you need to solve problems or upgrade. The introduction (which I always read first in any new book) tells the reader immediately that it is not necessary to read the book page by page from start to finish. The reader is told to feel free to skip around because there are no ‘surprise endings to spoil the rest of the book’. The author goes a step further and says that there should not be any surprises at all except the surprise one feels from understanding and making sense of it. The author compares the layout of her book to a football game, which should appeal to computer buffs that are also sports enthusiasts. Part (Quarter) I contains four chapters and discusses what you should consider about upgrading. She enables you to assess whether to upgrade or not to upgrade based on your usage and cost considerations. Part (Quarter) II covers preventative maintenance and other things that can be done to postpone or avoid the expense and down time of upgrading. Part (Quarter) III gets into actually doing upgrading. In this part a chapter is devoted to every conceivable component that you might want to upgrade or repair from replacing a 3.5 diskette that has stopped ‘floppin’ to installing and maintaining an At-Home Network. Part (Quarter) IV is composed of two chapters devoted to putting it all back together. Once I finished the introduction I went straight to the first topic that caught my eye – Avoiding Crashes. First Ms. Fulton states that ‘Windows gets so confused with all the things it’s supposed to be doing that it simply loses track of a program, gives up on it, and blanks out’. Now there is an explanation that someone who occasionally takes on more projects than she can handle really understands. The author goes a step further and offers several suggestions to hopefully avoid crashes. Restarting your computer periodically, updating your programs, upgrading programs to run with the current operating system, and using two hard drives are her solutions to avoiding crashes. I will let you read the book to learn her reasons for each solution. The next item I had to read about is shortening Startup time; here are real "I can do" things that I can accomplish to enable my PC to bootup faster. The most important thing to me though is that Windows 95/98 is known to take longer to bootup than earlier OS versions. I checked out Chapter 9 – Accelerating Your PC with a New CPU – and was/am very impressed with the CPU charts that occur on pages 176-179. These charts appear to list all CPUs manufactured by Intel, AMD, and Cyrix with the kind of information that will enable me to better understand CPUs, their designations and cache. A better understanding will enable me to better impart computer knowledge and use to students. I won’t bore you with all the interesting things that I have learned so far, but I do want to stress that this book is easy to read and understand. The author delves into preventive maintenance and how to get optimum performance out of your PC. When she gets to the chapter that covers upgrading by each part, the author discusses why to upgrade and why not to upgrade for each part. If you are interested in upgrading any part of your PC, including adding peripherals, or if you are just interested in what goes on inside, I strongly recommend this book. If you need a reality check on your decision whether to buy a new PC or to upgrade your current PC, this book will be of benefit. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 4th Edition, written by Jennifer Fulton, ISBN 0789722062, was published in mid-November, 1999 which makes it so new that it is not listed on a number of different web-sites. The first web-site that I checked was that of the publisher – Macmillan. Although they have links to Sams, Que, Informit, Complete Idiot’s Guides, Linux and others, I could not find this book at any location on the Macmillan web-site. The List Price for this book is $19.99. On the Internet, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Upgrading and Repairing PCs is available at Amazon for $16.99 and at Barnes & Noble for $15.99. I next checked a really neat site that is new to me – <www.bookpricer.com> that lists the stores with the best prices and what those prices are. The list provided for this specific book includes
Rose Lynn Saenger can be reached at karlyn@flash.net |