Customer Reviews

Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2

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SP2 is described here. Broadly, it closes various security holes in the default XP setup. There is more to SP2 than this, as Culp explains. But the closing of holes should be your first focus, if you are a sysadmin.

For instance, a nice improvement involves Outlook Express. Previously, when it received an email addressed to a valid user, it would inform the sender. But this meant that a spammer could find out which of her addressees at that destination were valid. So she could purge invalid entries. And the valid ones now become more valuable, including for resale to other spammers, simply because they are known to be valid. So those users would end up getting more spam. Grr! In the ongoing struggle against spam, Outlook's approach was too permissive. SP2 now stops this notification.

Another change that does not involve security, but improves the user experience, is a stronger ability for blocking popups. Very useful against some websites who put you into an infinite popup loop.

The book starts by assuming that you have installed SP2. It can equally well be read beforehand, as a reason to do so.

I finished reading Brian Culp's book Windows XP Service Pack 2 tonight and what a great read! While recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed I read this book. The words took my mind off the excruciating pain and I also felt as if I retained most of my wisdom.

I learned of many tools within Windows and other tools to download, as well as valuable tips. I did the most highlighting in Chapter 6: The Command Line and Other Advanced Techniques and Chapter 13: XP Backup and Recovery. However, Chapters 2, 4, 9, 11 and 14 have more than average amount of yellow lines.

Mr. Culp's book has helped me find answers and tools to old and new questions to better support my users. For this support and hard work I'm very grateful.

I'm an administrator at the University of Alaska Anchorage and I am recommending this book to my co-workers and clients. Administrators will learn more about Windows XP Professional security and backup solutions. Home users NEED this book to better understand how to use Windows XP Home and if the upgrade to Windows XP Professional is right for them. No matter of experience is necessary; Mr. Culp has made this book for everyone.

This book contains a series of one or two page descriptions of features found in Windows XP service pack two. While some of them were familiar to me, many were not. Most of them were things that I needed to do, but had not ever gotten around to learning. All were simple, such as how to delete the feature of XP wanting to send a bug report to Microsoft every time the computer crashes. Other features that I found valuable and implemented when I read them were:

*) Clearing Autocomplete.

*) Testing the backward compatibility of programs.

*) Disabling pop-up balloons.

*) Stop automatically adding addresses to your address book.

*) Editing the start menu.

*) Customizing explorer.

*) Setting the properties of the recycle bin.

*) Setting the startup options.

None of these operations requires a great deal of technical knowledge, if you can navigate your way through windows and understand basic computer operations, you can make these changes. I found them very helpful; in fact I incorporated a few of them into exercises that I gave my networking students this spring semester.

The unique thing about this book, and Mr. Culp's writing, is that it's actually entertaining AND informational! Believe it or not, folks, it is possible, and Mr. Culp does it with this latest installment in the "Spring Into" series.

I'm sure a few may be asking "Why do I need a book about an upgrade to my operating system?" I think this is answered by the download time usually associated with SP2. Microsoft's SP2 is virtually another operating system, with all kind of tweaks to XP that will make your computing experience that much more enjoyable.

There is no better way to discover these hidden gems than to read Mr. Culp's "Spring Into" guide to SP2. His treatment is comprehensive and thorough enough for the technophile, yet easily accessible to the novice user.

His writing style is informational, yet not stilted or overly formal. Often technical writers are pedantic, self-important blowhards who ignore the needs of their readers, seemingly making the book as painful as possible so that only the most dedicated of techies can endure to the end. Mr. Culp shakes this stereotype to produce another wonderfully entertaining and informational book.

I like how this book is put together. It's around 300 or so one page fixes for common issues with Windows XP. Though there are two problems that I find with it. First I think sometimes the explanations are too brief. With a screenshot there is only space for a couple of paragraphs and often that is too little to really cover the topic. The other problem I have is that these small sections aren't cross-referenced. They each stand alone and don't work with each other. There could have been a lot more cross-reference work done.

If you are interested in this book you should also look at O'Reilly's Windows XP Annoyances book.