How Computers Work (7th Edition) 7th Edition

I bought my grandson, a college freshman majoring in informatics, this book as a gift: How Computers Work (10th Ed.) by Ron White, First Printing, Dec. 2014. I pre-ordered it from Amazon back in November, 2014, and it did arrive in time for the holidays.

While I applaud the effort and book overall, having owned several editions in the past, there are fundamental errors early in this first printing that could erode reader confidence, since the mistakes are so basic. I imagine this edition was rushed to press prior to the holiday season, and frankly, it shows.

Now I must explain to my grandson the mistakes, and apologize.

Here's just a sample of what I've found so far in Part 1:

1. A table is not a computer, but a tablet such as an iPad is: Page 5, last paragraph: "--mainframe, desktop, table, digital music player, ... " ???

2. P. 13, image 3, 4th sentence is not a sentence and doesn't help the explanation: "Resistance is how the material which the electricity is flowing." ???

3. P. 15, image 5. The image of the rheostat is confusing and makes the opposite point it should. The way it is drawn, it contradicts the text. In fact, as the knob is turned clockwise, the amount of resistance should increase, not decrease as depicted in the image. When the knob in the diagram, as drawn, is turned clockwise, there is MORE resistive wire to travel through. The current out would therefore decrease. And that's just backwards to how knobs on radios and stereos normally work. Turning clockwise will increase the current out, not decrease it. Duh? See: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+does+a+rheostat+work&espv=2&biw=731&bih=387&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=SzKtVI3mOoOnyQTDz4KoBg&ved=0CDAQsAQ&dpr=1.75

4. P. 17, image of Mona Lisa is wrong, contradicts text to the left in section 6: The Mona Lisa appears in COLOR. This is NOT a half-tone image, consisting of only black and white dots. The whole example could be improved by showing a contrast between a half-tone (1-bit color) and, say, a 256-bit color image of Mona Lisa. E.g., see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halftone .

5. P. 36, first paragraph. Pages XXX-xxx are referred to. Where are these pages?

6. I bought the digital edition also, wondering if the same mistakes are there. Yes, they are. Furthermore, the navigation when scrolling was not working correctly in the latest version of Firefox (34.05) for the Mac (OS X 10.10.1). When I use the left navigation menu, click on Chapter 1, How Waves take the Universe on a Joy Ride, then start scrolling down, the page jumps to the beginning of the book! I can't even read it, unless I start scrolling from the beginning of the book. Come on now, this is totally unacceptable.

So I tried Chrome (Version 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit)). While the navigation works, the first Interaction just came up with an empty black box with a yellow border. It just does NOT work at all (but surprisingly it does in Firefox, and I can add ducks to the waves, if I FIRST scroll from the beginning of the book to get there).

7. The interactive animation on Writing Data to RAM (and reading it) is confusing. When getting to Reading data from RAM (in the same interaction), the illustration is simply confusing. How can a capacitor send a current through a transistor that is CLOSED. The circuit is broken between the capacitor and the data line. How can current travel from the capacitor to the data line, if the switch is off? This is not logical. It must be wrong, or I'm missing something here.

Overall, this is NOT a good start to the book, and makes me a doubter of the accuracy of some of the content in this first printing/web edition. I'm afraid I cannot recommend this book to others at this time with errors I've discovered in the first few dozen pages.

I am not a computer novice, having started with programming in FORTRAN on mainframe computers with punched cards. I taught college students how to use computers over 4 decades. More recently, I've written interactive Web simulations, tutorials and tests that are widely used.

My advice: Wait for a later printing when some of these rather basic and embarrassing errors are fixed in the 10th edition.

Overall a great idea for a book. I am really putting a void account of effort into the reading (trying to gain a solid understanding of computers). But there are numerous errors in just the first chapter alone. I am considering returning the book and finding a textbook. Funny how this is recommended reading for Harvard's CS50x course.

I have just finished reading chapter 1, but so far I am seeing numerous errors. I have already found two typos. Worse than that, the author doesn't seem to understand binary calculations. On page 17, the author tells me that 16 bits yields 256 combinations... this jumped out at me. I did the math, looked up my answer to confirm, and found that the author was wrong. In reality, the amount of possible combinations yielded is 2 to Nth power, where N is the amount of bits. So 16 bits would yield 65536 possible combinations.

Here's how the author probably messed up the calculation. He may have run the equation as N bits to the 2nd power, instead of 2 bits to the Nth power. This would explain why he got 256 combinations with 16 bits, instead of 65536. Perhaps this was just one mistake by the author, but given this book is called, "How Computers Work", this was a pretty big mistake. The illustrations are nice, but I don't like the writing style as much, and the errors I have found make me not like the book.

P.S.: if you need convincing that his math was wrong, I have attached a GIF that will show you. Each square represents 1 bit, because they each can only be two colors.

Years ago I started out reading Mr White's previous How Computers Work books and his approach and illustrations allow me to understand what is going on inside the machine. This book and his original book sit on my reference shelf front and center. With all the technology going on in our everyday lives I find a need to understand how things work will help me be a smarter consumer. If my son asks how a tv gets its picture or what type of video card is best or how are spinning hard drives different from solid state drives, etc. I can answer his questions. I picture Mr White's illustrations which really enable me to recall and repeat a concept. Don't be intimidated by the book. You don't have to read it front to back. You can read it section by section or concept by concept.

Beautiful illustrations, but I am finding errors. This one is forgivable, in the Introduction to the 10th Edition, page xviii: "...a computer that would return a solution in the form of punch cards". I remember punch cards for input, but not output. On page 17, I am asked to view an image of a two-bit Mona Lisa. But I see a color Mona Lisa. I think the image must be at least 8 bit. Also on page 17, the explanation for multi-bit sampling is not consistent with the Diagrams A and B that are referenced. The same diagrams are referenced a bit more intelligently in the discussion of sampling rate. Are the appropriate diagrams missing? Onward to Chapter 2, but I am disillusioned. Comments are welcome about suspected errors.

The artwork is nice, sure. But it slams you with concepts so quickly, and takes zero effort to make sure you fully integrate anything you learn. Not only is it paced terribly, but a great ton of the information presented here is flat-out FALSE.

If anything, this book may be considered a nice reference book, for those looking for a quick and easy refresh on concept they learned (more thoroughly) elsewhere.

God forbid you give this as a gift to a tech-inspired child.