Hardware Books

This is a great book cover to cover. For the admin who has never participated in an Active Directory roll out this book is a must have. The chapters quickly familiarize you the most powerful aspects of Active Directory without much repetitiveness. This is an excellent book for those wanting an overview or for a beginner with Active Directory. Well worth the purchase price.

Hudson and Fullerton definately come through in their presentation of Active Directory! Their clear and concise approach, drawing from their experience in training and consulting shines through! I am in the process of upgrading the network where I now work from Windows NT and this book is an invaluable resource!

The authors have done a very good jobs of explaining several complex matters. More importantly, the authors have clearly shown that they have trenmendous amount of real-world experiece. It's good to know that we still have some authors like that instead of too many professional writers, who have no real world experience and who just paraphase what M$ says about their product on the online help.

Thanks.

Tam T. Nguyen, MCSE

Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory provides the network administrator with complete, authoritative, "user friendly", in-depth coverage of the newest directory service from Microsoft. Sean Fullerton and James Hudson use their extensive previous training and administration experiences to expertly explain how to design, implement, and troubleshoot using the new directory service "Active Directory". Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory is very highly recommended for users ranging from Beginner to Advanced levels of experience. 554pp.

This book is very helpful if you are planning a Windows 2000 Active Directory design or already have one and need to get the most out of your AD. The authors have organized the book very well making it easy to find the information you need. The book is very useful as a quick reference. Additionally, material is presented in a logical order making it easily readable cover-to-cover if you need a comprehesive understanding of AD.

The authors stress the importance of a solid DNS design and drive home the point just how critical DNS is for good AD operation. There is a good description of forests, trees, and domains as well as much helpful information on planning sites and site replication. The book also goes into detail on printers and scripting.

I found the book very useful for setting up and administering different features of Windows 2000 such as group policy. There are good chapters on Group Policy Architecture and Managing Group Policy.

As an MCSE+Internet certified analyst assigned to the AD design team for a Fortune 500 company, I highly recommend this book. It makes a good operational reference for your bookshelf. Although not geared specifically for Windows 2000 certification tests, it is worth reading if you are preparing for the exams.

This book has a great knowledge of all things computer related, DOS, WIndows, Hardware, and more.

It is an awesome resource for all people who work with computers. It has great DOS, Windows and hardware information, and more. It is like a bible to me.

While this is a very good reference, it leaves a lot of room for disappointment. Perhaps its time to replace the resistor color code tables with summaries of the IEEE and ITU standards, certainly something more needed in the 2001 world of PCs. When was the last time anyone changed a resistor in a PC other than at the component manufacturer site? And it doesn't yet contain a power supply wire color code, which would be far more useful than resistor codes. There is info on Win98 but not on Win2K or ME (or even NT). The processor and socket list is hopelessly out of date. Fixed disk drive lists are way behind the times with only the most minimal information to help keep the confusing IDE/SCSI/EIDE PIO 1/2/3/4/5 ATA33/66/100/133 drive, BIOS, MB chipset and cable standards straight.
This is a good book for troubleshooting, repairing and maintaining the older PC, but it is not even treading water well in a world of P4 or Thunderbird processors, multi-gigabyte drives or 400Mhz RIMM memory. Still, I have to give it four stars (would be 4.5 if Amazon allowed) because there simply is nothing better out there except keeping file folders full of manufacturer specs, white papers and web page printouts.

I am a 14 year old and have usued this book to help me build everything from forts to computers, it's GREAT and I would recommend it to everyone!

When I first open this book I thought I was looking at an larger copy of the Pocket PCREF, after reading through it I found that while most of the information included is exactly like the Pocket version there is was more information included.

Large in size and over 875 pages, this reference book includes everything in the Pocket PCREF plus a very extensive glossary, printer control codes and a much larger pc phone directory. Overall a much better value that the Pocket PCREF book.

The material covered is broken down into categories and each category is covered well. The authors take a great deal of time in making sure the information presented is accurate and well documented. For the money this might be the one to have on your desk.

While this book won't fit in your back pocket, it will fit very nicely in a briefcase. An excellent value for the dollar. You might find similar books on the market, but you'll be hard pressed to find any one better. Well Done Sequoia Publishing.

I loved this book. It is rare to have a computer book that you can read cover to cover but this is one. It is meticulously researched and written, with good questions and exercises at the end to test what you learned. The only thing I didn't understand was why there were only answers to odd questions, but it didn't really matter. Finally there were excellent online references for future learning. This is a classic.

As a Flash beginner, I found this book to be the perfect starting point: concise, clearly written, and full of practical advice for creating basic Flash animations.

Kay writes in an accessible and engaging style, walking readers through basic Flash concepts like vector graphics, the stage and timeline metaphors, up through more advanced topics like coding interactive behaviors and working with sound. Finally, he introduces readers to the basics of Actionscript, the advanced Flash programming language used to create more complex applications.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this book for beginners like me who are interested in getting started with Flash.

The Web Wizard's Guide explains not only how to use Flash, but how to design with Flash. Tech-manual writers are notorious for leaving out context when describing a software interface, which makes learning most programs difficult. Kay's down-to-earth writing style simplifies the process. He uses practical, realistic examples to explain the concepts behind each menu command. He teaches you to know when to use Flash, and when not to use it. Read this book to learn good Flash design and keep the product manual around simply for reference.

I am a busy Art Director/Designer who, at last, is making the necessary transition from print to the web. The Web Wizard's Guide to Flash by Michael Kay has just become my most recent bible. I just love this book and can't put it down . . . it's like having your own web wizard always at your fingertips.

Michael Kay has done a great job in presenting a lot of intimidating technical information in an accessible way. The instructions are direct and clear and the language of the text is simple and friendly--not loaded with dull or confusing tech speak. The format of the book relies on well honed step-by-step technical objectives which, when applied, give fantastic results.

Best of all, I have been able to use these lessons directly in my day to day layout and design process. After working through this book, my web pages are now alive with animated motion and pizzazz, finally breaking me out of the amateur design crowd!

I highly recommend this text as a must read for any web designer or student or teacher who wants to learn and apply Flash - fast - in a painless, easy-to-read-and-use format. It should also be made more available on book store shelves in general.

as a web design instructor, i've read many books on flash and i am always looking for new reference/learning material to recommend to students. this one covers all the important topics very well. from the basic screen tour up through the nitty-gritty of actionscript, this book does a fantastic job of breaking down a difficult set of topics for a beginning flash animator. i would suggest this book to someone just starting out with the program, or for a person who's self-taught and is looking for the 'correct' way to do something. definitely a good investment.

This is an excellent book on the fundamentals of Microsoft Windows Operating Systems up to vista. The author definitely is an authority on the subject, and the book is pretty easy to follow with the C/C++ samples.

Particularly I like the chapters about the workings of DLLs. And the explanation of Windows memory management is also very clear.

Perhaps the book can be made a little thinner or use somewhat lightweight paper as I found it is pretty heavy to carry around.

In all, this is a very good desktop reference book if you are windows developer. Even though those RAD platform such as .NET make our life easier and enable us to make a good-looking app quickly, still, from time to time, you'll find a some level of understanding of how windows works help you write better code.

I am very satisfied with this book.

This is a comprehensive source for learning the inner working of the Windows. If you say i know Windows programming, i want to hear it from you again after reading it. Excellent. Must have in a bookshelf...

I like 5th edition of this famous book. They returned I/O part that was not present in the 4th edition. The book has all updates for Windows Vista new API features. This book is worth reading even for advanced developers.

What I don't like about this book is its size: because of thick paper the book is huge and it is hard to carry it around. Unfortunately, all Microsoft Press books suffer from this.

Also the book is missing information about in what version of Windows different API first appeared. Now the book says most of the time that API is supported on Windows Vista. I would also like to see it directly in the book whether the function is supported in Windows CE.

I have been programming for over 10 years, but my Windows specific C++ programming is relatively weak due to inexperience with it. Note that if you are in the same boat, you will need additional resources (web based, help files, other books) on top of this book as this book assumes you are already proficient in creating Windows apps.
They make no attempt to tell you otherwise, it is an expert level book - but even if you already know C++ well, there is much Windows specific details that this assumes you know.

Great book and very useful, just not entry level, so know that going in.

I'm a beginner in Windows programming and I'm glad I've found this book. I like how it focuses on "whys" and the correct usage of the described system elements. The authors also give enough details about specific APIs so, if reading for an intro, it's possible to follow without having MSDN handy. The code samples are very helpful, especially the mini-applications. The book doesn't concentrate on diagnostics/debugging though, you'd need some other volume for that.

This is really a rare book. Not stupid-funny, and so knowledgeable and pedagogic. I had bought my new iMac, the first since my Mac+ nearly 20 years ago. It looked like a modern Mac, and worked as such. Then I got Joe Kissel's book! And discovered all the stuff underneath. The holy grail of UNIX. And how smart the engineers at Apple still are! I was amazed by how many intelligent goodies they have put into the box. And really enjoyed the profound know-how of Joe Kissell, and his many step-by-step guided tours into the heart of the iMac. I learnt to install a firewall- and that I already had a firewall in my box. I was taught GIMP, and file sharing, and all about the iApp's. Backing up, booting and so on. Apache-in-the-box too. Thank you VERY much, Joe!

I've been using a spare iBook as a webserver for about 8 months now and decided to turn it into an email server as well. In just a few pages, this book explained exactly how to do it with Sendmail.

Unfortunately however, Panther ships with Postfix preinstalled (and from what I've read Postfix is a better alternative to Sendmail) so obviously the steps for configuring Postfix weren't included in the book. I emailed the author (who thoughtfully provides his email address in the book for help related questions) asking for instructions to configure Postfix, and within hours he emailed me concise details of how to configure Postfix with a shareware program called Postfix Enabler.

Just a short while later my iBook was not only an HTTP web server, but a POP/IMAP email server too. I had no idea it would be so easy, and there's 49 other wonderful techniques that are simple to follow: everything from using the command line with Terminal to installing PHP and MySQL and so much more.

The front of the book does say, "Covers Jaguar!", but I've been using it with Panther and the only trouble I had was with the Postfix issue. It's one of the most helpful OS X books I've ever read.

This is a wonderful book for all us souls who use OSX. The techniques are almost always a way to either solve a particular problem or learn a particular tool. I have only gone through about 30 of them, but each one has made my life either a little easier or a lot. A couple of examples are that I know understand how to best utilize the Finder and am no longer intimidated by Terminal. The style is breezy and very easy to understand without being condescending or dumbed-down. Strongly recommended

Joe Kissell writes for both the techie and we "normal" folk. His teaching of UNIX basics leaves you with knowledge, not boredom, and is worth the price of the book by itself. Most of the improvements he describes for both OS X and MAC are useful, and in some cases just plain fun, to any MAC user, and his ability to explain his techniques to the reader is an absolute pleasure. Can't wait for his OS 10.3 version.

I have been using a Tablet PC for a while, but haven't made full use of it's capability. This book has helped unlock some good tools and tricks to make best use of the Tablet.

I found this book to be really helpful. It has some great information on how to use the Tablet PC with all sorts of software and hardware, making it more useful than I would have guessed.

If you have a Tablet PC, or are thinking of getting one, this is the book for you!

Not only does it talk about some of the basic softwarepackages available for the Tablet PC, it also deals with some esoteric packages, as well as lots of hardware add-ons to make your Tablet PC hum.

If you want to know how to use your Tablet PC to best effect, the section on Usage Scenarios is really helpful. In this section, Mathews shows about 20 different job roles (Attorney, Technician, CEO, Engineer, Consultant, etc.), how each person uses the Tablet PC, and what applications and hardware options they can best utilize.

Since Tablet PCs are all about portable computing, there are also chapters on using wireless networking, and some of the neat new tools such as Microsoft OneNote. Speech recognition and handwriting recognition is explained and tips are given to get the best results.

And if you want to play with your Tablet PC, this book even talks about games and graphics packages that make your Tablet PC more enjoyable in Coach class.

I've read all of the Tablet PC books, and this is the best!

I am in love with my tablet pc. I am a medical student, in clinical rotations, and just love this toy. I wanted to know more about it, and therefore ordered this book. It seemed to be the best book available for my purpose. I am very happy I bought the book.

This book has all the information a new Tablet PC user needs to make the Tablet PC a powerful personal computing device.

The book starts out with the basics, then throws in Usage Scenarios, which show how different people use Tablet PCs. Then the author goes on to explain how to use the various features of the Tablet PC to the max. Finally, the book finishes with Office 2003 and OneNote coverage, then a review of various software and hardware that complement Tablet PCs.

All in all, this is a well-written book that's complete in coverage and easy to read.

Highly recommended!

This book was excellent and very informative. Mr. Young impeccably explains how to use PDFs to achieve the desired results of your product. I've often been confused on how to precisly use various PDF products, but with this book, I can now design my product the way I want it to look. This book is definitely a "must read"!

I'm one of those people who buys every software book on the market. I've looked at lots of books on PDF. This is the best yet. It's practical and tells me how to avoid making the most common mistakes in creating a PDF. I wish the rest of my colleagues would read this.

Unlike many books in this category, Carl Young's book is not a rewrite of the Acrobat Help file. He lays out the most common mistakes creators of PDFs make, and then provides step-by-step solutions. Highly recommended.

Every graphic designer should own this book! Designers constantly send PDFs
that are waaaaay to big, or have missing fonts to my small marketing/pr
firm. I may buy copies for every designer I work with.

I'm glad that there's finally one book about atl server, but this one seems to have been written in haste. Sure it shows you how to hook up to a database and pull out records, but the examples are not nearly as complex as msdn's . In particular, the caching section is seriously lacking...

This is an excellent book on the definitive technology for VC++ developers wanting to write web applications. ATL Server is the evolution of ISAPI; better, faster and much easier to write. If you are comfortable with C++ template programming and attributed Visual C++, you will find this framework a joy to work with. Just like ATL, ATL Server is streamlined, high performance and easy to extend.

Written by the ATL Server team, this book will guide you through the different parts of ATL Server, giving you not only reasons for why certain design decisions were made but also real-world examples.

The ATL Server library is the perfect addition to ATL, adding the ability to create web services and web applications with the light-weight model of ATL. I found this book very useful for getting new members of my development team up to speed on the basics of ATL Server development (both those with previous ISAPI experience and those without).

I also found this book very useful when tackling some of the more difficult problems that our application faced. In particular the Advanced sections on SRF files, Request Handlers and Web Services provided a number of useful techniques that we were able to apply in our application.

The book also outlines some techniques for using parts of the ATL Server library in non-web applications, which we are finding very useful as we update some of our existing code.

If you're a hardcore C++ developer wanting to do native web development, ATL Server is a great library to work with. If you've done ISAPI extensions, you'll find ATL Server to be a natural, flexible and very performant extension of that model, which makes development a *lot* faster.

And if you like that, then this book is a great way to get you up to speed on ATL Server. It is, after all, written by the people who wrote it. The book is wonderfully easy to read, covers both the basics and plenty of advanced ATL Server topics, and has tons of examples. Plus, it has the advantage of being written with real applications in mind.

On the other hand, if the profile above doesn't sound like it fits you, then this book is probably not for you :)

This book brings together articles from all aspects of digital audio from a multitude of authors into one volume. To find the same information you would have to dig through countless journals and troll the web, thus this book's first service is saving time for the researcher. Most books on digital audio focus on one particular audience - the programmer, the signal processing professional, or the recording professional. This book has a variety of articles from all of these fields. Thus it is likely that not every article will be interesting and useful to everyone, but the book should have enough articles of value to make it worthwhile to anyone interested in this fascinating field. The author himself cites Andrew Glassner's "Graphic Gems" series as an inspiration, and you could indeed rename this series "Audio Gems" and not lose any meaning by the retitling.

Of course, there are articles on the basic science of sound that should be of interest to anyone starting out in the field such as "Understanding the Decibel" and "Sound Propagation". Those interested in signal processing and programming of algorithms will enjoy Perry Cook's "Introduction to Physical Modeling" which condenses much of the material in his book "Real Sound Synthesis for Interactive Applications" into one digestible introductory article. Included are some of Cook's programs that assist in physical modeling, but he saves his real contribution to this field, his Synthesis Toolkit in C++, for volume two of this series. Likewise Albert Bregman's extensive research on the subject of auditory scene analysis is condensed nicely in the article "Perceptual Organization of Sound" and acts as an accessible introduction. My personal interest is in synthesis and signal processing, thus from my perspective I found the article "Timbre Trees: Integrating Sounds and Images" to be the most interesting article of the bunch. It explained a fascinating concept I had never heard of before involving an integrated approach to motion and sound. The entire concept is not explained in this one article, but there are references to other sources of information if you want to learn more details. This is the whole purpose of this book and its series - to introduce the reader to a topic in digital audio via a clear article, and then refer the reader to more in depth material outside the scope of the book should you need to know more. I highly recommend this book to anyone involved in the field of digital audio.

This book is a great book for anyone that works with digital audio. Audio Anecdotes introduces us to the practical side of audio. Just take a look at the Table Of Contents to see that there are papers on a wide variety of topics. Each of the 25 papers are written by experts in their respective fields, and each provides practical tips for creating great sounding audio. These tips aren't ideas that are obvious even to those with years of experience in the field- many of them come from years of research. In addition to the tips and techniques, Audio Anecdotes is filled with example code so you can play around and hear exactly what the authors are writing about. The CD-ROM comes with demos and explanations for most of the topics as well as the software to compile and run each demo. The software includes Caliper (a custom, text-based program used for controlling demo parameters), Flavor (a language, based on C++ and Java, great for multimedia applications), Octave (a language similar to MatLab), the PortAudio Library (a C library for audio I/O), and STK (Synthesis Toolkit- a set of C++ classes used for audio synthesis and processing). Whether you're going to use all this software or if you're simply looking for some practical mixing tips, I recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about the practical side of digital audio.

Audio Anecdotes: Tools, Tips, And Techniques For Digital Audio is an anthology of essays by a wide variety of expert authors concerning the exciting field of digital audio, lessons that can be learned from its past, discoveries directly applicable in the present, and anticipation of new changes in the future. Cutting-edge, practical, advice-filled instructionals include "Timbre Trees: Integrating Sounds and Images", "RampTest: Quantifying Audio Performance", "Designing a Movie for Sound", "Perceivable Auditory Latencies" and much more. A highly recommended supplementary educational text for anyone pursuing or involved in a career in the digital audio field, Audio Anecdotes is clearly an excellent addition to career-themed professional libraries as well as audio technology and technical reference shelves.

Ken Greenebaum, who co-edited this book with Ronen Barzel, and wrote some of the articles, indicates in the preface that his motivation for putting Audio Anecdote together was to get the book he had wished for when he was starting out in digital audio. What he came up with is a wide-ranging collection of 25 articles on various aspects of sound--what it is, how we hear it, how it affects us, how it can be produced and altered, and how it can fool us. Some of the articles are rigorously scientific and technical, while others really are anecdotal and personal. Most significantly there is a wealth of information about the manipulation of sound, and there is some history of the development of our understanding of sound.

Most of the material is aimed at people who have an intense interest in audio, and audio reproduction and development, and who already have some knowledge. However this book also works well for a rank beginner (such as myself). The articles are clear and well-presented with many black and white illustrations, tables, diagrams, and mathematical formulas, not to mention programming code! There is a glossary and there is some overlap in the "anecdotes." For example, after a brief overview of the book, Greenebaum begins with an introductory-like article on what sound is and how we measure it. This is followed by a more technical article by Hesham Fouad entitled "Understanding the Decibel." This in turn is followed by Greenebaum's essay on "Sound Propagation." His exploration of the physics involved is clear and easy to read.

One of the many things that I discovered is that "When we speak on the telephone, a portion of our voice output is intentionally played back to us through the earpiece." Derek DiFilippo and Greenebaum explain in their article, "Perceivable Auditory Latencies" that "If we didn't have a clear sense of hearing ourselves speak, we would tend to talk louder and louder because we [would] assume that the listener on the other end...[wouldn't be able to] hear us either." (pp. 74-75)

I also learned (from Oscar-winning sound director Randy Thom in his article, "Designing a Movie for Sound") that the wise film maker should make his movie with sound in mind pre-production, not as something added on afterward. As Thom points out, in the great cinematic experiences, "the visual and aural elements are working together so well that it is nearly impossible to distinguish them." (p. 406) He mentions the opening of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and the bird attack scene in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), and the opening of David Fincher's Seven (1995) as examples. And I can't help adding the striking opening sequence from Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973) as another preeminent example of how sound can be as important, or even more important, than visuals in making a scene a lasting experience.

Included with the book is a CD that you can listen to with examples of sounds keyed to the discussions in the articles. The effect of latency ("the time between human input to a system...and system output," p. 65) and many other sound phenomena are demonstrated in the most effective way possible--by hearing them.

Special mention might be made of writer Adrienne Ross's personal contribution, "Understanding Hearing Losses and Hearing Gains...," which truly is an anecdote, beautifully written about her discovery of a hearing defect that she had lived with most of her life without realizing it. The fact that she had compensated for the defect by using her other senses, dramatically demonstrates how our experience of sound is not isolated from our other sensual experiences.

This little book is a wonder! I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a Mac-I would actually say it is essential. Easy to read-it's a scream. Full of what-to-do-if's and how to keep everything running ship-shape. Explains mind-boggling concepts in easy to understand terms. Great step by step instruction. Everything from RAM and ROM to System Folder conflicts to fonts and software to how to keep a lean mean machine and handling "problems-Yikes!" I actually took a class entitled "Understanding Your Mac"at a local Jr. College that used it as the textbook. I keep my copy right beside the computer. Get this book for yourself or a friend now!

Everything I know about computing I learned from this book or from its predecessor, "The Little Mac Book" (or from Williams's "Tabs and Indents on the Macintosh," evidently no longer available). All books about Macs by Robin Williams are funny, imaginative, and easy to understand. If you have a Mac and you have this book, you don't need anything else (except, of course, whatever Mac book Williams comes up with next).

I've been a Mac user for over a decade and I still loved this book! It's packed with good tips and helpful suggestions to find your way out of a Mac jam. I highly recommend it (and I love the cover!)

Broback and Williams manage to proivde you with plenty of solid information without boring you with details. Excellent for the Mac user who needs to get the most out of his/her machine and know what to do when something goes wrong. I followed a lot of their advice and my Mac runs more stable than it has in a long time.