Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing Laptops, Second Edition [Paperback]

Scott Mueller (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0789733765 | ISBN-13: 978-0789733764 | Publication Date: December 26, 2005 | Edition: 2nd

Scott Mueller has gone where no computer book author has gone before — right past all the warranty stickers, the hidden screws, and the fear factor to produce a real owner's manual that every laptop owner should have on his desk. Upgrading and Repairing Laptops, Second Edition shows the upgrades users can perform, the ones that are better left to the manufacturer, and how to use add-on peripherals to make the most of a laptop. This second edition has been updated to include:

• The latest processors and motherboards
• Complete assembly and disassembly information
• Updated memory standards
• Upgrading your hard drive to increase performance
• Changes in networking and firewalls

The included DVD contains one-of-a-kind video showing just what's inside a portable PC. If you have ever wondered what goes on inside your portable PC, how to upgrade/repair it, or how to live on the road with it, this is the one must-have book of the year!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Laptops--call them notebooks, portable computers, or whatever else you like--are tightly engineered items. It's hard to get all the required components to obey stringent performance and power-management requirements, and still fit into a small case. The job usually requires a custom motherboard and other specialized components, and so the laptop owner who wants to upgrade his or her machine faces a much more difficult task than the owner of a desktop machine with a similar wish. One can swap out the hard drive, add more RAM, and make tweaks in software, but almost everything else requires the addition of external components, which kind of defeat the purpose of a laptop. That's the message the reader takes away from Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing Laptops. It's not Mueller's fault that such computers are hard to do much with, and that your best upgrade procedure is often a visit to an auction site.

That said, Mueller does a great job of explaining how laptops work--how the engineers went about cramming all those heat-generating components into those miniature chassis in the first place. He also explains a lot of interesting component theory, such as how magnetic hard drives store data and how various DVD standards differ. The information makes for good reading, and comes in handy when you're shopping. He also demonstrates his skill--long well-reputed among builders and repairers of desktop machines--in teaching diagnostics. He explains, for example, how to test a laptop power supply, and why you should consider it a prime suspect in a malfunctioning computer even if the LEDs come on and the cooling fan spins. A CD-ROM features videos that show disassembly procedures--a strategy that works better than photographs and numbered steps. --David Wall

Topics covered: How portable computers work (and sometimes fail to work), and how to diagnose their woes. Sections address general troubleshooting concepts, system disassembly, and various subsystems such as memory, CPU, storage, and video. Coverage of PCMCIA (PC Card) is particularly good. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

Scott Mueller has gone where no computer book author has gone before — right past all the warranty stickers, the hidden screws, and the fear factor to produce a real owner's manual that every laptop owner should have on his desk. Upgrading and Repairing Laptops, Second Edition shows the upgrades users can perform, the ones that are better left to the manufacturer, and how to use add-on peripherals to make the most of a laptop. This second edition has been updated to include:

• The latest processors and motherboards
• Complete assembly and disassembly information
• Updated memory standards
• Upgrading your hard drive to increase performance
• Changes in networking and firewalls

The included DVD contains one-of-a-kind video showing just what's inside a portable PC. If you have ever wondered what goes on inside your portable PC, how to upgrade/repair it, or how to live on the road with it, this is the one must-have book of the year!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 912 pages
• Publisher: Que Corporation; 2nd edition (December 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789733765
• ISBN-13: 978-0789733764
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #978,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very big book..., July 5, 2005

By 

David O'Meara "CodeRanch Sheriff" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Upgrading and Repairing Laptops (Hardcover)

This is one of the most misnamed books I've ever read, although "Upgrading and Repairing Laptops" is probably a better title than "Just About Everything Relating To Computer Hardware, Up To And Sometimes Including The Operating System, Focusing On But Not Limited To Laptops". There really is that much information contained in this book.

Unfortunately it is not possible to recommend the book based on the title or the information on the back cover as the 'upgrading' and 'repairing' and to a lesser extent 'laptop' keywords are misleading. It does contain an astounding amount of information of the inner workings of computers, but there is simply too much additional information to say that it is about the topics mentioned. They are more a side note than the main focus. The information constantly refers back to laptops, but again is too far ranging to say that laptops are the primary topic.

That said, the information is broad, concise, structured and obtainable. If you're interested in the deep mysteries of computer hardware this is a great resource including in-depth discussions on processors, motherboards (and chip sets), memory, storage (including CD and DVD media formats) and just about everything else. Just be aware of what the book covers before purchasing it.

64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A compact version of Upgrading and Repairing PCs, September 9, 2004

By 

Andrew Ling "AL" (Brisbane, Queensland Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Upgrading and Repairing Laptops (Hardcover)

Upgrading and Repairing Laptops is just a version of Upgrading and Repairing PCs cut in half with about 50 pages on laptop related matters and a few grammar changes added to the book to make it sound laptop specific. Most of the information in the book has been copied out of Upgrading and Repairing PCs (some parts even sound as though you are meant to be using a desktop computer instead of a laptop computer). In some parts of the book there is hardly any talk of laptop computers. For the next edition of this book, the laptop-related parts of the book should be combined and the information that was copied from URPCs should be taken out. If you want to learn how your laptop works, get the service manual for your system and the current edition of URPCs.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much Quantity and not enough Quality, March 2, 2004

By 

Gerald Lukas (Tampa, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Upgrading and Repairing Laptops (Hardcover)

Scott Mueller's book "Upgrading and Repairing Laptops" probably should read "The History of the Computer and How it Works". This book is over 800 pages and I quickly got lost in superfluous material dealing with how data is stored on a hard drive to a detailed description on how a video cable is made. What I was hoping for were specs of the top laptop manufacturers with detailed descriptions of removing and repairing, but found only minimal pages on the subject. Scott's solution is to download this information from the manufacturer which leaves me in a quandry why I bought the book. The CD disk I found useful but again deals with only one particular laptop.

There is some very useful information in this book but getting it is chore.