Next he describes cleaning up your hard drive. That means deleting temp files and some other unnecessary trash. He did it much different than I would have and I think I learned a better way, but would later read how to do it my usual way. Then he went into Scandisk and defragging along with an explanation for why to do it. Not only that but he has you bring up the Scandisk Report and helps you read it by pointing out the important information you may not even know you are looking for. Nice touch.
He quickly gets into your computer's performance issues and right to one of the greatest problems, spyware, along with a good explanation of it. All the warnings are there along with the "Read the EULA (End User Licensing Agreement)" warning when installing new software, as well as a warning about the messages you get enticing you to download some "great" software to prevent your computer from "sending out your personal information." He talks about the most popular spyware removers, then goes into antivirus products, even telling you how to acquire a free antivirus tool. So far I like this book for its thoroughness and its simplicity.
He spends some time on software bugs and updates (or patches), and the reasons for each. In that regard, he confines that discussion to Microsoft products.
From there Carey plunges into a great explanation of modems and their different specifications. He guides you through steps to possibly increase your modem speed and covers a lot of territory. Through it all, I never got lost once and understood it all. My brain can be pretty bad at times, but I did well here. He covers both dialup and broadband connections, even giving you places to go on the Internet to check your modem performance for either kind.
Chapter 4 covers Internet items. There is a great section on cookies (people often misunderstood them) with good explanations. Temporary Internet files are well covered as well as pop-ups and how to cope with them. I thought that chapter was pretty thorough with its 26 pages.
He then talks about E-mail, spam and hoaxes. It even covers help for AOL users and filtering for some popular email sources such as Hotmail, NetZero and Yahoo. That chapter covers quite a bit about filters.
The firewall chapter gives a pretty good explanation of the concept as well as covering both software and hardware firewalls. 14 pages go into detail and cover Universal PnP as well as PnP and explaining the difference. I was unaware of the difference between the two. It gives step-by-step instructions to turn UPnP off in Windows ME and XP.
The next chapter contained "basic computer tips" and this is where I really started to pay attention. He explains DMA (Dynamic Memory Access) and goes into settings for it, advising you to make settings that are against the Windows warnings. That was interesting. He talks about downloading and using Tweak UI (an unsupported but helpful download from Microsoft) offering some guidelines to keep you out of trouble. A nice explanation of font limitations (how many are installed) follows and ways to control them. There is information describing swap files and steps for making adjustments.
Next he gets into computer resources and has a brief explanation. He also delves deeply into startup and the problems that too many items in the startup folder can cause. Along the way URLs are offered for a more complete explanation of each item discussed. He gives tables showing the suggested settings for many items you might see in your "msconfig" startup tab. Also covered is the use of the Add/Remove tool with a brief warning about items that could become installed on your computer via the Internet without your knowledge. He shows how to turn off "error reporting to Microsoft" and how to disable Windows XP's automatic restarting of your computer when it encounters a serious error. Also discussed in that chapter is when and why to convert your file system from FAT32 to NTFS, which he considers a more robust system.
Next he offers several items starting with a discussion about power management and related items. It goes into a short explanation of USB, and even discusses "flash drives" along with a short instruction about backing up your data.
Chapter 10 is about upgrading and compares old technology with new. It covers most components and peripherals, but does not go into detail about doing it. Remember that this book is for the novice and not meant for a more advanced person with additional experience.
Following that he touches on preventive maintenance such as blowing out dirt and debris from inside your computer with suggestions on the different ways your case might come apart. It's interesting that he pointed out looking for the possibility of leaking capacitors that might be on motherboards made during certain years. It has a nice section about updating drivers and how to check if a new one is needed, plus how to find it. He suggests places on the Web to get help with updating drivers if you are a bit squeamish about that and willing to pay a fee. There are step by step instructions for manually deleting temp files that the automated system misses. He also explains what you should do when a temp file refuses to be deleted.
Chapter 12 talks about light trouble-shooting of your computer. It explains some special troubleshooting features included in the different versions of Windows and how to use them if something goes wrong. Since this book deals mostly in improving the performance of your PC, it is not written for any technical trouble-shooting that might get the novice PC user into trouble. Carey warns about downloading certain types of software from the Internet that is said to improve your PC's performance, and explains the possible consequences. A number of instructions are included in that chapter for the later versions of Windows.
In the appendix, he supplies places on the Web to get free technical support and offers you the URLs. He even recommends user groups as a place to go for help (I agree wholeheartedly) and I'm not surprised since he is a member of Phoenix PC User Group www.phoenixpcug.org and plans to retain that status indefinately. I know it is not that simple unless you already belong to a user group and are known, but it certainly has great possibilities if you are sincere when you attend a meeting. I have seen many people who only come to a meeting trying to get free help, but do not intend to join the group.
I was disappointed to see that Carey merely explains what a network is, but does not say anything about setting one up, but then again, this book is intended for the novice and networks are a bit complicated, in my opinion. I still don't understand how to set one up after all these years. However, he does give you some URLs for where to get information, in that regard, including his own URL.
I was also disappointed when I came to his reference to explaining the difference between resources and memory. He mostly recommended some URLs for that purpose, but I do agree that it is a complicated and lengthy subject.
There were about four pages of the most popular questions and answers for problems in Windows 98/ME and two pages of the same for Windows XP. In my opinion, that would only scratch the surface, but where do you stop with the possible questions? There are also a few suggestions for a few very useful "free" programs that you can download. The book is easy to read and not that long. If he had included some of the items in it that I would have liked in addition, the book would probably be lengthy and might even get the reader into trouble, so he probably did it right.
The publisher is McGrawHill/Osborne and, again, the author is Carey Holzman. The retail price is $16.99, which seems reasonable for this 230-page book with lots of information for the novice. It is doubtful this book would get you into any trouble and will, more than likely, help you learn some simple steps to keep your PC running faster and more reliably than ever before.
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