Customer Reviews

Electrical Systems Design

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most of the textbooks I use are poorly written and of very little use. This one, however, is a very good text book and a very good reference book in one.
The book is essentially a reference on system design through the perspective of the NEC. There are loads of NEC tables and helpful examples. In addition, there is a fair amount of sensible advice.
It is so well written that it takes much of the confusion out of the code book - not an easy thing to do. There are occasions when you need to read something two or three times until you get it right, but the examples are very helpful in eliminating the doubts you always have after you've tried to look something up in the code book.
This is one of the few textbooks I will keep. It's already very well worn.

This review is not about the content of the textbook, but rather the print quality. This edition of Theodore Bosela's Electrical Systems Design (paperback) looks like the entire printing order was botched. The pictures and graphics are indiscernible, which makes it harder to understand some of the concepts laid out. The pages are much thinner than I thought they would be, as well... not quite Bible-thin, but some of my classmates ended up tearing some of the pages from just regular use. You can even tell the poor quality of this edition by the item's picture... it almost looks like there is a shadow image of the design.

About half of my class of 14 went on Amazon and thought they were getting a good price on a book that is normally $185+ new and in college bookstores. What they got was an inferior-quality textbook for the same price as I paid (I happened to end up with a much higher-quality hardcover- I think it's under the "unknown binding" listing?). It was hard for them to read, the pictures were blurry, the pages were thin and it didn't help that it was paperback to boot (that much was in the listing, at least).

My advice- make sure you know what you're getting. My experience with the paperbacks from Amazon is that they are not worth the money. Try to find a hardcover version for a better learning experience and higher resale value.