Customer Reviews

Fix Your Own PC

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

 

 

This book covers everything you need to repair, maintain or upgrade a personal computer. The text covers legacy and more recent hardware. It's informative and is enhanced with plenty of photos and charts to make computer repair/upgrading easier for both veteran and novice. I built my computer using this book. The appendices include trouble-shooting flow charts, lists of companies selling what you need and lists of valuable software utilities available, amoung other items. It even covers all you need to know about peripherals. In the four months since I've purchased it, it's proven to be an invailuable reference.

This book as is good as it's title: I did manage to fix my own (Pentium II) PC by reading it! It gave me the knowledge to find the problem (a bad motherboard) and the courage to replace it. Operations that at first glance looked intimidating, were made relatively simple by the book's clear discussions, explanations and photos. It's range covers the inner workings of old PC's up through the Pentium II (as well as a little bit of info on the Pentium III.) Not a perfect book, though: the photo printing could be better; and the section on power supplies isn't complete or accurate, particularly when it comes to ATX-type supplies--oddly, the type found in most Pentium machines, for which the book is otherwise a good repair guide. (The power supply is a vital component in a PC, and is oftentimes the first gizmo to go bad.) I had to go outside the book to find that critical info. But criticism aside, I wouldn't have been able to repair my computer without this book, period, so I would recommend it. Perhaps a newer edition will correct the minor shortcomings.

Written with non-technical PC users in mind, Fix Your Own PC is a valuable guide to diagnosing, fixing, and understanding your PC. That is hardly surprising, given that the book is into its sixth edition with over 200,000 copies in print.

In the author's opinion, repairing a PC is actually a job that exercises the muscles between your ears. True to his words, he makes this job appear less physically daunting than fixing, say, a car.

With nearly 250 photos, illustrations and troubleshooting flowcharts, Fix Your Own PC introduces you to the alphabet soup of the PC world in layman terms. The book comes with easily identified icons highlighting useful tips and important notes about the subject, as well as handy cross-references that point to more details elsewhere.

If you want to know how to change a hard drive, fix balky memory, or figure out why your monitor has gone black, this book will give you the sense of pride that comes with accomplishing work on your own. Plus, it might save you time and money!

Perhaps the only drawback is the format of the book, which can be difficult to browse on a cluttered tabletop.

This book is great for beginners. It covers nearly every kind of hardware that has ever gone in a standard PC. It does a great job of explaining old/obsolete/outdated hardware as well. However, information on new stuff, like PCIe, SATA and DDR2, is pretty scarce.
The troubleshooting charts and techniques are a little thin and there is very little coverage of troubleshooting techniques for the operating system.
If you want to learn about computer hardware, this book is everything you are looking for and more. If you are looking for a complete book on troubleshooting & fixing computers, it is a good starting point, but you will need another book to help you with OS problems.

This book shows you clearly how a computer works and how you can get into it to make changes, updates and repairs. I was happy to learn that I actually know a lot! But the stuff I didn't know what there. I was able to fix two older computer (seniors) by following this book. I was able to easily move a hard disk drive, so now I have extra memory on my current computer and can recycle an older one.

Easy to follow. Could use more diagrams or photos. The book is written with language that is easy to understand. Useful glossary and index at the back.

I fully subscribe to the old shoe "a picture is worth a thousand words" and one thing his book does is give you more than adequate views of what's being described in text. I brings you up to date on all the merid of changes that have occured. Of course as soon as someone writes a book like this it is already obsolete, but for the consumate "upgrader" like myself who will never own the latest and the greatest it is a perfect reference.

the book arrived in perfect shape, fast delivery, great price. Couldn't ask for more.