Customer Reviews

This Wired Home: The Microsoft Guide to Home Networking Second Edition (Eu-Independent)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you want to interconnect all your computers and printers this book explains all the basics you will need. But if you want DSL there is not enough - in fact there's really nothing. It also does not explain any details about phone line complexities if you want to link your home computers over your phone lines, e.g. how to also use a modem or phone line DSL over the same system.

In "This Wired Home", Alan Neibauer provides a pragmatic view of home networking. His text covers topics from various types of hardware involved, to the configuration of sofware utilities and applications used for an assortment of network communication services.

If I had to knock the book, it would be for a lack of coverage on cable fabrication. If you're going to be fishing cable through walls, chances are you're not going to be using prefabricated cables with connectors already attached. I would have liked to have seen better coverage of tools and methods used for crimping RJ-45 connectors onto Cat 5 cabling, etc.

The material is well written, and is geared very much toward the novice network user. Experienced users will find this book to be a quick, easy read.

This is the best book I have ever come across for home and office networking using Windows95/98. It's easy to read and understand. Alan Neibauer takes you through each process step by step along with helpful follow along images. If your new to networking this is the book to get.

The Microsoft Guide is a comprehensive book that provides all the information you need to set up home networks based on the Windows 9x, ME and XP Operating Systems. I'm A+ / N+ Certified technician and also a PC Repair Instructor and with this book I was able to prepare a Networking fundamentals course with excellent response from the students. Half of my first class enrolled on the advanced course and are even talking about getting N+ certification. Thanks to this book I was able to create an enjoyable learning experience for the students.
By the way don't pay attention to the review that states lack of knowledge from the author. The reviewer is dumb enough to miss that Windows 98 and ME can't be servers because they are designed to be either workstations (clients) on a server/client enviroment, so they only access resources from the server, or work on a peer to peer enviroment so they can share resources with other PC and also access them from other PC. Also he is so ignorant to state that there's no such thing as Gigabit Ethernet. Maybe if he took the time to study the IEEE 802.3 cabling standard or even read any Network+ book he will crawl out of his ignorance.

THE BEST! This is one of the most straight forward books on networking and Windows that I've ever read. I only wish it had been my first, it would have saved me hours of Windows setup time and hardware shopping.

Strangely enough, this book does not deal with Windows NT 4.0 workstation, but there is enough information you can extract to restore an NT nework which has stopped working for no obvious reasons. Save yourself a couple of hundred dollars on a network expert, fix it yourself, and get tiny but invaluable facts about setting up the TCP/IP and subnet mask fields for the next time. My surmise is that an upgrade in Service Pack disrupted the settings. A NIC card with self-diagnostics really helps too - it could have had more specific info on this area. The book also dwells too long on the advantages of a network over none - you would assume that if you would consider buying this book, that you already knew that.

Don't be fooled by the one negative review here..this is a great book for home networking. The typo (from Gigabit to Gigabyte) doesn't change the wonderdful content of this book and how EASY it makes it to create a home network. This book has won praise all over the place.

Most Microsoft publications are either trivially simple or opaque. Not this one. Neibauer clearly discusses the essentials of home/small business networking. He includes discussions of a lot of material that I have been unable to find elsewhere.

This book was once very good but because it was written in 1999 and published in 2000 I would look elsewhere for home networking info. Many changes have taken place since this book was published -- wireless networking standards have changed, cabling requirements have changed, and operating systems have improved. My recommendation is SOHO NETWORKING, an excellent book published in 2003.

This is a good book to fine out just what a home network can do and how to do it.

I finally got my home network running with the help from this book and an article on-line. This book did lead me step by step on how to use Netmeeting so that I could work on the kid's computer while not leaving mine.

The author of this book spends a lot of time making things easy with all of the step-by-step instruction. So if you don't now or care about things like "cmd" or "ipconfig" you will really like this book.