Customer Reviews

PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I buy a lot of PC hardware books for my job as a PC manager. Most of them are me-too knockoffs of Muellers Upgrading and Repairing PCs. This one is different. It's smaller than U&R PCs, but incredibly information-rich. The authors don't waste time and space with obsolete information. Everything here is up-to-date and reflects the real world of systems based on modern Intel and AMD processors. This book has no errors that I can find. I thought I'd found a couple, so I emailed the authors. They responded within half an hour (!) and explained things. As it turned out, what I thought were errors weren't. I'd been wrong about those things all these years. I'm ordering copies for all my technicians and recommending they read it through from start to finish. If you're looking for the best PC hardware book available, get this one.

Short review: it's O'Reilly, buy it.

Longer review: this is a fantastic book. It is concise, current, inexpensive (how often do these words apply to computer books?), enjoyable to read, and, above all, USEFUL. The authors mingle sound advice and dry humor with a casual writing style, keeping the reader engaged and entertained as s/he absorbs the most (by nature) boring technical details. Technicians who charge by the hour should buy this book immediately... it will pay for itself in a week or two.

That said, this book is NOT "the only book you'll ever need". Though I agree with most of the authors' opinions, honest debate is always a good thing (for example, they write that, as of June 2000, Socket 7 is obsolete. I think now is the time to buy, as several of my clients are budget-conscious and still essentially happy with their 486s). Additionally, this book needs a chapter on modems, and more second-tier reviews would be nice, but I suppose that's what the website is for.

Bottom line: get yourself a big thick "phone book" on PC repair (Bigelow and Mueller come to mind) and this book and you'll be equipped for most any upgrade or buying decision that comes your way. But without a strong technical background or a huge reference work nearby, don't open the case.

Written by a husband and wife team, PC Hardware in a Nutshell proves that technical books don't have to be dry. This book touches all the bases that you'd expect in a PC book but it goes much further. Beyond the purely technical stuff it focuses on what you need to know to make good purchase and upgrade decisions, and it's obvious that these people know what they're talking about. I bought this book intending to use it as a reference but this is a very easy book to get into as a straight-thru read. It's sometimes funny, at times outrageous, and never boring. It's refreshing to read something that ignores all the marketing hype. When a product is great, they say so. When a product sucks, they tell you that too.

My wife bought me this book for Christmas. I was impressed just flipping through the book and reading random sections so I decided to sit down and read it cover to cover. This is clearly the best PC hardware book on the market. Solid coverage, factually correct, and the opinions expressed are never contrary to my own experience. It's not as big as those huge compendium PC books with twenty different authors but there's more real information in it. If you're only going to buy one PC hardware book this is the one to get.

My wife's PC died and the repair place said it'd cost $225 parts and labor to replace the power supply. That seemed awfully expensive given what new PC's sell for, so I hauled it back home. On the way I got to thinking about fixing it myself, so I stopped by the mall and looked at PC hardware books. This one had more details about power supplies than the others so I bought it.

I'd never worked on a PC before and was a little nervous about opening my wife's system but I figured if I killed it it'd be no great loss. I bought a new power supply for about $50 and installed it. When I crossed my fingers and turned the system back on it started normally and has been working ever since. That means this book already saved me $150 over its cost.

Even if you're a PC novice like me this book tells you everything you need to know to fix or upgrade your system. I don't know how this book compares to other PC hardware books because I've never read any of them. But as far as I'm concerned it definitely deserves five stars.

I came across this gem while browsing at the bookstore. I wasn't really intending to buy a PC hardware book because I already have the latest edition of Upgrading and Repairing PCs but this one caught my eye because it was from O'Reilly. O'Reilly books are usually the best of breed on any given topic and this one is no exception. It's half the size, weight and price of the monster PC hardware books but it contains more actual useful information. The authors obviously know their stuff and haven't padded the book with a bunch of useless stuff to make it look more impressive. What is there is solid information about every aspect of a PC. If you're going to buy just one PC hardware book this is the one to buy.

I'm getting ready to do a major upgrade of my home system. It's been a few years since I'd done much work inside a PC so I ordered this book to catch up on what I'd forgotten about. I'm glad I took the time to read it. This book recommends stuff by name, and that advice turns out to be on target every time. I was planning to buy an HP CD burner. Not the best choice says this book. It recommends buying a Plextor, which I'd never heard of. So I searched the Internet for hours reading about Plextor and HP CD burners and it turns out the authors are right. Plextor makes the best burners on the market and lots of people have problems with HP burners particularly with Win2000. And to top it off the Plextors are cheaper than the HPs. If you're planning to buy, build, or upgrade a system, buy this book. It'll save you its price many times over.

I was exceedingly happy with the original edition and could only imagine the typical modest update. However, I am just astonished at the value added with the second edition. Pagewise, there is a substantial increase due to the need to cover the subsequent technological change. For example, the coverage of CD-R, CD-RW and DVD (ROM and (re)writabale) has been doubled as they have now become mainstream and deserve increased attention.

I did notice that the "Picks" sections have been removed, the reader is now referred to their website:[] for specific component recommendations. Obviously, a good decision as those sections in the first edition quickly became obsolete.

Don't let the title mislead you, all necessary and appropriate software subject matter is covered: operating systems (including XP), drivers, diagostic S/W, etc. as they interact with the H/W components to comprise the total PC pacakge.

If you're inclined to loan things, you'll discover that buying just one wasn't enough and perhaps a third for the office.

As the say: "It doesn't get any better than this."

Overall, the book was worth the price. While much of the technical information about the hardware and architecture are available in other books, the case studies are unique to this book.

One thing I did not like was the MS-Windows centric view in designing the systems. Many of the readers who are going to bother building their own PC are going to be GNU/Linux users (like me.) It is apparent from the first chapter that the author is NOT anti-Linux, nor is he ignorant about its potential. I just would have liked to see more OS-neutrality throughout the book.

My approach to recycling PC hardware is just the opposite to the author's: When I build myself a 'bigger and better' PC, I load it with GNU/Linux and recycle the old one for my four-year-old son with MS-Windows 95. The only reason I do that is solely for the learning games that he has.

Other than that one complaint, I say again, this book is well worth the price.

Good job.

First of all, this is the greatest hardware book I have ever read. However, I was confused why there was no real coverage of modems. I know most computers come with a generic modem, but for Linus users having a good external modem (not a winmodem) is vital. This is my one and only complaint about this book. Other than that it is the best (money) you can spend on a general computer reference book.