Customer Reviews

Computers: An Introduction to Hardware and Software Design

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I am a college computer science instructor teachng a sophomore level CS course in computer architecture. This book is supposedly meant to introduce first or second year computer science students to the basic organization of computer components, but it miserably fails at presenting the fundamentals as it attempts to be all things to all people at all levels in all disciplines. Most chapters are unfocused as the authors jump all over the map instead of focusing on one component at a time and methodically presenting fundamental concepts of computer systems. I would not hesitate to use the word "criminal" to portray the authors although they have not broken the law of this land by charging $95 for this. Just 4 weeks into the semester, I have explicitly told the students to go back and attempt to sell the books back. The authors are more than welcome to email me so that I can address some specifics, but since the book is so poorly written and hopelessly unfocused that I would not know where to begin.

I too am a college instructor. I will give one example of poor authorship. The book has barely over 1 page on micro-operations, then it goes off on and on about micro-programming with diagrams that look like my dog's barf. Also, the very first chapter on operating systems babbles about distributed systems, which most other OS texts do not touch till 8th or 9th chapters. Words cannot express how bad this book is.

Pinkert and Wear are at it again, this time with a grippingly detailed masterpiece of hardware and software design passion. This book was a rock-em-sock-em roller coaster - Pinkert and Wear can not be stopped. This dynamic duo set out to make a hot and steamy text book and they did just that. No other authors to date have managed to capture the sheer erotic power that is achieved by the perfect bonding of HARDware and SOFTware as these two have. Each word flows forth with expert percision that exudes pure sexual energy that surely all engineers must experience as they pursue new levels of system design. Once again proving that celebacy really does lend itself to brilliant feats of engineering!