A+ JumpStart: PC Hardware and Operating Systems Basics (Paperback)

by Faithe Wempen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Build Your Computer Career on a Solid Foundation

Whether you're setting out to earn your A+ certification or just want to know more about how a PC works, A+ JumpStart: PC Hardware and Operating Systems Basics is the place to start. Inside, an experienced PC technician and author demystifies every aspect of PC technology, giving you a firm footing from which you can work towards and realize your goals. Coverage includes:
* PC safety and preventive maintenance
* Motherboard selection and setup
* CPU and memory types
* How video cards and monitors work
* Setting up hard drives
* Selecting and configuring expansion boards
* Electricity basics
* Selecting, installing, and troubleshooting printers
* Selecting and setting up network components
* Configuring Windows for network file and printer sharing
* Device resource management in Windows
* Troubleshooting Windows
* Setting up Internet connections

From the Back Cover
Build Your Computer Career on a Solid Foundation Whether you're setting out to earn your A+ certification or just want to know more about how a PC works, A+ JumpStart: PC Hardware and Operating Systems Basics is the place to start. Inside, an experienced PC technician and author demystifies every aspect of PC technology, giving you a firm footing from which you can work towards and realize your goals. Coverage includes:

PC safety and preventive maintenance
Motherboard selection and setup
CPU and memory types
How video cards and monitors work
Setting up hard drives
Selecting and configuring expansion boards
Electricity basics
Selecting, installing, and troubleshooting printers
Selecting and setting up network components
Configuring Windows for network file and printer sharing
Device resource management in Windows
Troubleshooting Windows
Setting up Internet connections

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1st edition (July 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782141269
• ISBN-13: 978-0782141269
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,139,258 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for the beginner, October 10, 2002

By A Customer

This is not the only book you'll need to study for the A+ exams, but it's definitely the first book you should read if you don't have much background in PC hardware yet. It lays out the basics for every exam objective in language that anyone can understand. If you would like to get A+ certified but you find those big 1000-page books intimidating and confusing, try this book first. After you read it, the bigger books will make much more sense.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ruined by too many major errors, June 6, 2003

By	Katphish "Katphish" (ny) - See all my reviews

The A+ jumpstart professes to be an introduction to the basic info you'll need to know for your A+ exam. If you don't know what the A+ exam is, this book will tell you, and even if you arent interested in getting certified ever, you'll learn a lot of basics about PCs. Those who are serious about getting A+ certitified however should beware and take note that this is NOT an all in one guide. For that I would reffer you to the "All in One A+ Certification Exam Guide" By Michael Meyers. So don't expect to learn it all in this one book.

What this book will do is give you a pretty good place to start if you have no idea where to begin on your quest to getting A+ certified. It tries to "jumpstart" you, by giving you the basic run down of many key concepts and facts. Generally it does a pretty good job of this, but in some places it falls short.

Where? Well.. it's tough to write a book at this level. In some places the book tells you stuff that is so basic it's almost common sense, and in other instances the book assumes you already know things that many people may not (such as the fact computers use binary numbers to process and store data). It's a bit akward, and some of the more basic computing concepts are ignored, it's difficult to tell whether they were left out by chance, or were left out because the author considered them "advanced" and unnecessary to begin with.

The book also has a habit of asking you to remember stuff it never talked about. It will say things like "remember when you learned such and such from chapter 2" when in reality chapter 2 only made a passing comment about what it's reffering to. It almost seems at times as if the book is a chopped down version of an all in one, more coprehensive book. But this doesnt detract too much from the over all experience.

I did notice one major typo on page 98... In the paragraph it says "with 16 bit color you get 256 colors"... then in the table right below it, it clearly shows 16 bit color as having 65,536 colors. It's a good thing I already understood color depth enough to notice the mistake and know which was correct (the table). Many introductary tech books dont get enough attention from the editors, and I could just imagine how confusing this may be to someone who didnt already know about color depth. Come on guys, do better editing!

Yet still, the book is a pretty good place to start if you're looing into A+ cert and don't know where to begin and want a quick overview or intro. But I would strongly suggest Mike Meyer's book as a second step or to anyone REALLY serious about A+ Cert.

***
As an update to this review I've come across another MAJOR informational error in this book. The chapter on memory is COMPLETELY WRONG. It claims that to fill a bank of memory the bit width must match that of the CPU's address bus... when this is clearly INCORRECT. In fact, what they mean to say is the EXTERNAL DATA bus (big dif). This isn't a one-time typographical mistake either, but is repeated through the ENTIRE chapter. Why didnt the editor/fact checkers notice this BLATANT error!

This, combined with other smaller errors I noticed is enough to make me completely loose all confidence in any of the facts in this book. Consequently I can no longer reccomend this book as a study tool because you may be learning/studying the WRONG INFORMATION! This is unacceptable for a book that people are going to buy to help them prepare for a professional certification exam. This is no small deal since the test can cost over 300 dollars to take, and learning the wrong information early on can really hurt someone's understanding, especially beginners who will just end up being very confused by conflicting facts when they move on to other books.

What good is a book that is meant to help you learn, when you cant trust any of the facts it gives you? Unless you want to read this book while sitting online so that you can double check every number, figure or definition it gives you... avoid this book. Im very disapointed to be forced to change my rating from 4 stars, to 2 stars based on this experience.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to Understand, learn quickly, Great Pictures., November 14, 2002

By	V. Fallon (Hubbardston, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Studying for the A+ Cert Exam? Start with this book definetely. Everything is well written and easy to understand. Wished more books were written like this. Then from here go to the Michael Myers Book. Good luck!!!