Customer Reviews

Windows XP in a Nutshell

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book suits my purposes perfectly. If you are comfortable with computers, if you like details, if you get frustrated with the fluff in most Windows OS books, then this book is for you, too.

The book is well organized, nicely formatted, and printed to the usual O'Reilly standards. The text I've read is clear and brief.

It is a very complete, but dense, reference. The biggest section is a 250-page listing of XP applications and tools and how to use each one--applets, control panels, disk tools, network tools, games, task manager, address book, etc. If itcan be used from the command line, details are included for that as well. There is special 50-page index just for this section where you can look up concepts and tasks to find the right tool.

It also includes:
Full documentation on all the usual console commands.
A good introduction to the registry and what you can do with it.
Everything you really need to know about Windows Script Host.
Full listing of keyboard shortcuts.
Notes on Power Toys you can download from Microsoft.
Keyboard Equivalents for special characters.
A list of file extensions in common use.
Keyboard shortcuts (accelerators) by key and by function.
Descriptions of all the services that are available with XP.

Does that sound great, or what?

After buying a bunch of Windows XP books, this is only one I keep next to my computer. The others are all holding up the short legs of tables.

Every time I get stuck, I just pull it out, and I have my answer in less than a minute. No more wading through cryptic help files or irrelevant websites. If I lost all my XP books, this is the only one I'd buy again.

I asked a few friends of mine if they could recommend a Windows XP book, and they all told me to get the O'Reilly book. Given O'Reilly's apparently good reputation, I decided to lay my money down for my own copy.

Now, when I first got my hands on this one, I didn't know quite to make of this dense book. But after a few days, I picked it up and started really getting into it. Then I looked through a few other Windows books I had on my shelf and just had to laugh.

This book is just in a completely different class. So many other books seem to be all screenshots and excerpts from the Windows online help, while this one seems to be written, cover-to-cover, from the perspective of someone who ACTUALLY uses the product. It's littered with tips and "gotchas" that have already saved me a lot of time and aggravation, and it's very well-written and easy to understand.

And I'll say something I can't say about any other Windows book I've seen: I actually learned something reading this book. Pick one up for yourself and I'm sure you'll discover the same thing.

I want to like this book, since I love the look of O'Reilly books, and have benefited in the past from a couple of the "Annoyances" books, and because O'Reilly is NOT Microsoft.

In fact, I already own "Windows 98 in a Nutshell". Truth to tell, I didn't use it too much, but did like the various sections. I read it and got a pretty good feel for the facilities available on a Windows system. And it was good on TweakUI and a bunch of other stuff tucked in various dark corners.

This current incarnation of the "Nutshell" series left me disappointed, though. It has a lot in common with its predecessor, and has an excellent middle section: the Alphabetical Reference to Windows Components, which is itself about 250 pages, and pretty much gives you all the programs that come with and in Windows XP, what they do, and their command-line parameters.

This is the reason to own this book. Just to take another book I have around, "Windows XP Inside Out" (a Microsoft book) for comparison: it has over 1400 pages, and covers most topics of interest exhaustively (and exhaustingly), but has no list of any sort that would allow one to browse through which programs the system offers. Occasionally, and in a very low-key way, they will refer to a program you can run to do something relating to the topic at hand. But just try to find a reference to anything resembling it in the index! Moreover, they never give a model command line for a program. This Nutshell book, then, shines in this area. It also, more or less, tells you which facilities only apply to the full-blown "professional" version, and which apply to both that and the Home version of XP.

However, the rest of the book is less useful. There are nice general tips and definitions in the first three chapters, and there are later sections on keyboard shortcuts and system menus. There are chapters on the Registry, Networking, and the Windows Scripting Host. However, these are little more than introductions to the topics, so not much use if one needs to actually do something with the information.

But what really gripes me about this book is the number of errors it contains. Now, I know that computer books like this one are incredibly dense with facts, and a few mistakes are unavoidable. Still, consider: on page 520 they give a sample VBS script to illustrate error handling. It has two obvious mistakes in it. OK, now go back to the 1999 book, "Windows 98 in a Nutshell", page 466. Same script, same dumb errors. Hmm....

No, what REALLY gripes me about this book is its lousy index. If failed me most of the time, and even if it did list a topic, it didn't list it in all the spots it was covered. Too often, it just listed some passing reference, and missed a whole section devoted to the topic. That says to me that some deficient piece of software was used to index, and no human bothered to even see if the final product was reasonable, much less functional. (Looking again at "Windows XP Inside Out": its ratio of index items to text was over twice as great as this book's, yet even with that improvement, its index is not that good.) A technical book lives or dies on the quality of its index. This book is definitely not in the pink of health.

Having said all that, let me say that indexing is crucial, but requires a devoted, technically savvy human to do it (using computational aids, of course). This costs money, and time. Computer books are published for the nonce, not for the ages, and all too often the index is viewed as having no more point than has that tired leaf of lettuce underneath your tuna salad at the local diner. Perhaps there's some official Microsoft tech book on XP that gives all its facilities in a complete and logical way, with a fully-functional index. At this point I don't know. ... this book will prove useful to anybody who has to cope with XP. Of course, you'll need other books, too....

A find that few computer books are actually written for people who actually use computers. Nutshell is an exception. I've been reading some of the other reviews here, and one guy suggests buying four other books (probably his own). Why buy four books when you can get it all in one package for about twenty bucks?

For example, the registry and networking chapters are terrific guides, simple yet to-the-point. It's written for Windows users, not IT professionals (although I found out about the book from a friend who uses one in her IT job). As for scripting, I don't need the entire history of scripting technology; just the essentials that are applicable to Windows XP in a format I can use on a day-to-day basis.

I'm also a grammar freak, and I appreciate the intelligent writing. This is the book I'd get if I could only get one book on XP.

Sharp, concise, easy to read... A great book for the experienced user.

Nothing out there will touch it for complete coverage of XP.

Although it was designed for audience with prior Windows knowledge, the simple language David Karp and his co-authors used in writting this "Windows XP in a Nutshell" ensured that novice enthusiasts would cope with it.
This book explored every nook-and-corner of both the Home and the Professional editions of the Operating System. The 550 pages of this book could be only a fraction of what many voluminous texts offered; still, very few of them matched the in-depth analyses that is evident here. I treasured the authoritative exposure it gave to Registry, Network Architectures, Security options, and Multimedia inputs. Every chapter of this book brims with applaudable technical expertise: on the part of its author. Anybody who is familiar with Windows XP system, (Home or Professional), would be amazed at how this book tendered revamped information on the usefulness of the Operating System's Backup and Recovery Tools. The same applies to the utilities of its Device Driver Rollback.

In conclusion, "Windows XP in a Nutshell" is a quality textbook, which would serve the needs of its readers. But, for reference purposes, I had wished that its compact information were extended a little bit. Its 550 pages could have been stretched to a dynamic 750 pages with great ease; and with no harm whatsoever!

If you want a single source reference for Windows XP, this is it. It is written for someone who is familiar with Windows and computers, yet needs more information about the new features of XP.

The book methodically goes through all of the Windows XP features in an easy to read fashion.

There are also a lot of configuration settings that are useful, but nonetheless hard to find from Microsoft.

Overall, an excellent reference.

This book does a great job of covering the middle ground between a book for novices and a techie's manual. It covers the basics briefly and moves on to the details useful to an experienced Windows user. It even goes into scripting and into the Registry, topics for expert users, but that's at the end of the book so it doesn't get in the way of the things the typical reader will want to know. It's exceptionally well organized and reasonably well-indexed. The typeface is crisp -- other computer books look they were mimeographed -- and the screen captures are reasonably clear, although color would make them better. The website lists errata and changes in the 3rd edition -- a nice feature. (I have the first edition.)

[A review of the SECOND EDITION, 2005.]

Yes, this is a reference, book, inasmuch as I can't imagine many of you reading it cover to cover. But if you already have just a modicum of experience with XP, individual articles in the book should be easily understandable. Albeit rather terse, as befits a reference, and the traditional style of many O'Reilly books. But this brevity is a strength of the book, coupled with the extensive coverage of topics. Most articles can be read in a few minutes, and give you the gist of what can be done. Without you having to read multiple chapters in some other book.

Though perhaps the section on the Internet Explorer could be expanded. Given its market presence, this may be a well thumbed section of the book for some readers, and more details here might be convenient.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of this book is Tim O'Reilly's name on the cover, as one of the authors. I remember him writing a lot of text for the X11 Windows texts in the 80s, when his publishing business was getting started. Nice to see him still actively writing technical material these days.