Customer Reviews

Expert Guide to Windows 98 (Minaki, Mark. Mark Minasi's Technical Solutions.)

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

 

 

Many of the things detailed in this book - particularly with regards to the registry are incorrect! I suggest finding a better book as I have personally grown frustrated with this book myself and am looking for something better. It is simply wrong and out of date.

This book is a must for understanding how and why Windows 98 works. Remember this book isn't for beginners, so try and buy a beginners guide to Windows 98 along with this one.

One example that this book is not for beginners: Another reviewer quoted what they thought was an error on page 105. Well, that person was mistaken because the book is quite correct. If that reviewer had read up to page 109 he/she might have learned that you first personalize the display settings to ensure that there is something to later edit and restore.

So, the moral of this story is: "finish the book before you pass judgement."

I mostly bought this for general windows info and especially network information. After reading the network section a few times, I still have to buy another book to figure this out.

I've had the book for almost a year . It has been pretty well useless . On some topics , it pitches at the beginner level ; on others it's advanced (but never in adequate detail). It feels 'cobbled together ' . A very poor substitute for a real technical reference . It reads like a collection of introductory chapters to other books ! Far better stuff elsewhere . Here's one sorry shopper . Don't join me on this one please .

Once again this book fails to deliver when I need it. Having trouble with Windows loading drivers on boot-up, I look up device drivers in the index and find a description of what some "loadfailed" messages mean. (Example: "You can't run Windows without extended memory"). Not a word of advise on what to do next to actually solve the problem.

For that reviewer who is disappointed that this book is out of print - I'll sell you my copy. Cheap!

Too many know it all "experts" are putting "know nothing" guides on the market. With this reference guide your IS/IT supervisors will be asking you to handle 98 connectivity, configuration and all problems that come up. It is definitely the most in depth book I have seen on the market.

I personaly own this book myself and it was fantastic. Of course Wintendo 98 is a dinosaur today and fading, if not gone already. But save yourself the cash and get it free from Mark Himself on this website, just goto the downloads section.
www.minasi.com

I bought this book some time ago and I still find it useful for my daily use with Windows XP. Specially the chapters on VBScript and HTML and the information on Networking still are very updated. If you still have Windows 98 because your hardware is not supported under Windows XP, (Some Video Accelerator cards) or you are interested in buying a cheap and still useful book for your Windows XP system, so don't look for more.....

Mark Minasi is an abolute expert on everything Windows, especially networking and servers. This book, which is of course slightly outdated since the release of Windows 2000 and XP, is an excellent primer for those of us still stuck with the 98 version (e.g. gamers)...

The author clearly knows his Windows 98; he just can't explain it clearly. This is from page 105: "The first thing I want you to do is to change your display settings... Now we'll back up the Registry... Our aim here is to delete those settings from the Registry and then restore those settings by restoring the original Registry."

Huh? Will we get back the display we had before or after we changed them? Which settings are "those settings"? Which is the "original Registry"?

The reader is instructed to complete the above exercise using SCANREG even though he still has the Registry Editor open from following the author's instructions two pages back.

This book would have benefitted greatly from a few more rewrites before publication. In its current state, a lot of good information is lost because of poor presentation.