Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows 95 [Paperback]

Peter Norton (Author), John Mueller (Author)

Book Description

Series: Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows 95 | Publication Date: February 1998

This one-source reference gives users of all experience levels the ideas and techniques they need to get maximum value out of their Windows 95 upgrade.Shows users how to optimize their operating system performance to meet specific needsProvides advanced tips, optimization techniques, and detailed architectural informationOffers in-depth and detailed insights in lucid, jargon-free personalized language

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This one-source reference gives users of all experience levels the ideas and techniques they need to get maximum value out of their Windows 95 upgrade. - Shows users how to optimize their operating system performance to meet specific needs

- Provides advanced tips, optimization techniques, and detailed architectural information

- Offers in-depth and detailed insights in lucid, jargon-free personalized language --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 824 pages
• Publisher: Sams Publishing; 3rd edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672312557
• ISBN-13: 978-0672312557
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,623,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In-depth and articulate., March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows 95 (Paperback)

John Mueller and this book have saved me more hours of grief with Windows 95 than I could have imagined any one book would do. For example, when I needed some recommendation about how to keep my machine running correctly, I found everything I needed. There are sections on backup, regular maintenance like diagnostics and disk optimization, and some simple troubleshooting. I also found sections on the use of various files that other books don't even hint at. One such example appears in Chapter 9 where the author explains what the various compatibility files like Autoexec.bat are used for.

This book is a tad theory heavy, but even here the author excels. I now know how various parts of Windows 95 operate, making it much easier for me to diagnose problems with my system. The clear and easy to understand diagrams are a real plus. Again, the author lists filenames in the theory section. These file listings recently helped me fix a problem DLL (also known as DLL hell) by simply copying a new version of the DLL over the old one.

One of the authors, John Mueller, thoughtfully left his email address as part of the About the Author. I contacted him and found him extremely helpful and thoughtful of my concerns. Even though Windows 95 is old news, the author spent considerable time helping me use his book more effectively and even helped me around some problems areas within the book.

About the only two problems with this book are the index (not the author's fault since the publisher puts this together for him) and the lack of new hardware information. However, considering this book was put out before much of the modern hardware appeared on the scene, I can hardly blame the author for this oversight. My only thought is that he should keep the book up-to-date better for those of us who are still using Windows 95 and not filling Microsoft's pockets by buying Windows 98.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It looked good on paper -- until I actually tried to USE it!, February 27, 1999

By 

Doug Briggs - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows 95 (Sams) (Paperback)

Windows 95? Sure. It works, and I'm not going to a bloated and buggy newer version just because Microsoft needs a few more billion dollars. Besides, how many times am I expected to learn Windows? So I got this book that advertises it has everything there is to know about the subject.

Alas, whoever laid out and wrote the text for Peter Norton's Guide to Windows 95, Peter Norton or John Mueller or, more likely, perhaps what would amount to a committee, seems to have jotted down subjects that came to mind then found chapters to plunk them into.

The hopeful user of this tome of over a thousand pages is subjected to a collection of introductory sections: Overview, Contents, Quick Reference (30 pages is "quick?"), Acknowledgements, About the Author ("Author" is used singularly and, interestingly, does not mention Peter Norton), Tell Us What You Think, Introduction (11 pages of mind-spinning advice on how to use this unuseable book). As awful as most computer books are, this one sets a new standard. Any novice or intermediate user could learn every function of Windows 95 by the time they learned how to beat the most elementary information out of this book.

It's not a lot different from a maze game, where you're sent hither and yon in search of the trail to the finish line -- this book has many such labryithine trails, and most seem to lead nowhere. For instance: Windows Explorer's File menu has a handy "Send to" choice which comes out of the box with two choices -- 31/2-inch floppy and My Briefcase. Of course, it seems reasonable that I could add other destinations (my Zip drive, for instance), and in this Guide's index you'll find the entry "Send To -- page 40." On page 40 we're told:

"Send To: Use this special entry if you want to send the file or folder to a floppy drive or other location. We'll see later that you can modify the destinations listed in this entry to include just about anything you might need."

Ha! Exactly what I want to do! But what's this "We'll see later?" Why not now? A paragraph later I was encouraged to be told, "It's often handy to create additional destinations such as the desktop, project folders, and network drives for this section of the 'context menu.'" That statement sounds like the one before it, said in different words. Now are we to discover HOW to create additional destinations in the Send To menu? Nope. In spite of a laudable assurance in the Quick Reference section of the book that "Entries . . . are often repeated both within and across topics for quick reference", seldom will we find anything repeated where it would be most useful (which is ALWAYS where we are reading about it at the time). Instead, we're constantly sent on fishing expeditions elsewhere, even when the instruction needed would consume only a few words. (In this case, by trial I found that the Guide could have said simply: "Drag the Zip-drive icon from My Computer to the Send To folder in Windows Explorer.")

Here's the next tidbit of useless information on the subject of adding destinations to the Send To menu: "Chapter 5 shows how you can use this feature to make your desktop a friendlier place."

I found nothing about the Send To menu in Chapter 5, the kind of frustrating dead-end encountered repeatedly.

The index is next to useless. The index in any computer book should reference and cross-reference; it should accommodate every search term a user might imagine. But not this Guide to "Everything You Want to Know About Windows 95 -- In Plain English."

Struggling through this $35-book for a year before I threw it away reminded me of IBM's response to the Department of Justice's demand for documents during an old antitrust proceeding (that fizzled out): Documents? You want documents? So IBM sent several moving vans full of documents for the DOJ's lawyers to scratch their heads over: Case dismissed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed and well designed., April 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows 95 (Paperback)

The authors got me up and running very fast. I didn't care all that much about details at first and this book avoided those details until later. The best thing it did at first was get me on the Internet with few hassles.

The power primers helped get my overloaded and underpowered system running better. I don't have the money to upgrade my system every few months, so getting the most out of what I have now is very important.

Once I did run into problems with my machine, the various theory and troubleshooting sections helped a lot. I found Chapter 15 especially helpful when I couldn't get games to run properly. The material on DirectX was great, even if it is a little out of date.

So, if you're looking for a book that's going to give you everything you need, try this one. I found that it really helped me when I needed it.