Customer Reviews

Windows Annoyances (Nutshell Handbooks)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an excellent book. Think you know Windows? Read this book, and I think you'll discover more than you think. If Windows is giving you fits, or you'd simply like to change a few things that just annoy you (who doesn't?), pick this one up. It's very simply an excellent reference tool for both Windows users and anyone who administrates Windows computers.

Fortunately, this book should be good for both the novice and the professionals. However, if you are a novice, just make sure you understand the instructions that are carefully laid out in the book. There is nothing at all complicated, but there are many examples of simple registry changes that could be bad news if you just rip through it. Take it line by line (few examples have more than 5-6 simple steps), and you'll have no trouble at all.

O'Reilly is truly an amazing book publisher. It's very uncommon to pick up one of their books and find even one error or lack of coverage. This book is NO EXCEPTION. O'Reilly makes a durable book with a clever binding called a RepKover. That's very important, something you'll discover after referring to O'Reilly books over & over & over again. These books are kept on the desktop or very nearby and used continuously.

Finally a book that is not as thick as my family Bible and a lot of the Microsoft "Hype" that is in the other books. It gets right to the issue. Those O'Reilly folks do an excellent job in all of their Nutshell books and it good to see them approaching the Microsoft world with the same outlook.

The book provides easy to understand and implement solutions to many of the quirks that plague me in my work as a system administrator. Although some of the undocumented Win95 information it contains is available elsewhere he presents the information without using extreme technospeak and not making the reader feel like a dummy. I recommand that this be a must read for anyone who is at all involed with win95

I ordered this book in the hope that I could solve a few of the "small" user problems that I had, where I was not prepared to spend hours searching in books with more than a 1,000 sides.

I was not disappointed as I quickly flew through it for the first time. Great stuff, no frills, no fuss, just short sharp solutions for the "Little Bugs" in Windows 95. No long descriptions of how Windows 95 works and why, just practical solutions, to get rid of them BUGS . This is a working book for working people who are not into reading an enclyopedia to find the solution, not for theorists

It has unfortunately one draw back and this applies to the Windows NT side of this book. The problems that appear when using NT are of a different breed from those of Windows 95. The problems and solutions that are described are usually commen to both systems, but not NT specific problems (e.g. "How can I stop NT from copying one network mapping with drive N to several other drive letters i.e. N O P Q ..- Z", "How do I stop printer confirmation dialogs after the printer has printed my documents ?" etcetera, etcetera. ). I hope that the next addtion also includes larger NT percentage.

Looking forward to the next addtition !!

The author cuts to the chase, confronting an annoying "feature" of Windows and handing out specific information about tweaking it for the better. This isn't one of those fluffy "Tips for Using Windows that You'd Know if You'd Just Read the Online Help" books. The difference is refreshing.

On the down side, there's too much reliance on editing the registry. Unlike other fixes, registry hacks fall into the "don't try to understand it, just do it" category. But I've resisted such modifications, and I still find the book to be greatly useful. Too bad such a book was needed in the first place!

This book is an absolute godsend.
Sure is has some of the 'tips & tricks' you might seen elsewhere but there
is enough new information to make this book indispensible.

The only bit of warning I would give is that it is not for beginners.
The book frequently takes you into the registry and if you don't feel comfortable
tinkering around there then you should be extra cautious.

An absolute must in any PC library!

This is the kind of book that is both fun to read and still highly technical. I work tech support for an isp and the first page I randomly opened to (page 219, "Dial-Up Networking Refuses to Remember Passwords") discussed 8 possible solutions to a problem I get called about all the time! The rest of the book is just like that. I am currently delving into the topics of registry searching and editing. I wanted a book that I could carry on the metro, and its convenient size great content guarantee that it will be frequent addition to my commuting gear. Leave it to O'Reilly to come up with another winner that isnt over-priced and over-weight

Miss the days of digging deep into your desktop OS and really figuring out how to make that machine sing? Were you the kid who was grounded in middle school for pulling apart the family computer? Want the power that autoexec.bat and config.sys gave you to make MS-DOS your own OS? This book puts MSW-95 system back in the hands of the bedroom hack, and gives the fearless user the power to move past that "hit the television to fix the picture" stage to which to which GUI has stuck most of the world. This is your chance to see the man behind the curtain!

Very good book, it covers lots of ground and helps you with everyday "windows annoyances"

After contacting the publisher and the author, they were able to help me fix the problem I was having. I mistakenly blamed a solution in the book for a problem that was actually caused by my antivirus program! So please disreguard my earlier review (11/97) - I love this book!