Hardware Books

I owned the first edition of this book and decided to upgrade. That was a good choice. The discussion of USB-based devices is very valuable and explanation of Firewire helped me pick a video camera.

This is the easiest book on PC upgrading money can buy. A 10!

As a "computer senior citizen" -- most of this is new. This book helped me install more RAM and a new disk drive. Step by step pictures made it very easy. My kids were impressed!

My system was SLOW. Over the weekend, I followed step-by-step instructions to add RAM, defragment my disk, reorganize my file, and fine tune a couple settings. In a few hours, my system was running much faster. I'm a novice. The book made these intimidating operations VERY EASY.

Make existing capabilities better by adding disk-caching software and more RAM, defragmenting the hard disk, doubling disk storage capacity for compressing the hard disk, restarting your system daily, and upgrading to the latest version, especially with a computer less than two years old. Install and plug in to a surge suppressor as the first upgrade. Add a math coprocessor to run complex spreadsheets and math-intensive programs such as computer-aided design. Save money by replacing hardware: only hardware technicians know how to repair most PC hardware devices. Make repairs by beginning with the cheapest, easiest fix and working to the hardest and most costly. Think about basic physics for how computers work, and the problem area may show up. Find an area user technical support group for common fixes to common mistakes. These are some of the many clearly illustrated and reader-friendly comments author Kris A. Jamsa shares in RESCUED BY UPGRADING YOUR PC. His book stands out in a crowd, sharing concerns and information with Wayne N. Kawamoto's BUILD, UPGRADE AND REPAIR YOUR PC NETWORK ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET, Mark Minasi's THE COMPLETE PC UPGRADE AND MAINTENANCE GUIDE, and Aubrey Pilgrim's UPGRADE AND REPAIR YOUR PC.

C'est un trés bon ouvrage sur le sujet. Il fournit de bonnes pistes concernant la gestion des buffers de reception et la synchro des medias. Rien que pour cela le livre est incontournable.
Olivier Rassemusse

Perkins offers us a deep explanation of how RTP can handle real time audio and, more importantly, video across a standard Internet connection. RTP has now been around for some 10 years, and has been extensively built out, based on practical feedback from its earlier usages.

As you might expect, much of the text concerns the packet formats used in RTP. There are subsidiary protocols within RTP, like its control protocol. Naturally, these are explained, as they are a necessary part of the overall RTP.

Some chapters delve into specific timing issues. One, called lip synchronisation, refers to the difficulty of synchronising the audio and video portions of a video signal. Other chapters discuss how to conceal lost video packets. Error concealment is a very practical necessity in this field.

The author is an expert in RTP/RTCP area, and this book is a must-have reference if you are working on this area or interested in . inlcuding VoIP/Videoconferencing, Streaming. The book presents the all technical aspects of RTP/RTCP precisely and correctly.

Colin Perkins is obviously well regarded in the area of RTP with many papers and research to his credit. This book is a very thorough and readable text on RTP. All aspects of RTP are covered in sufficient depth. The only thing that would have improved it would have been access to code. At various sections in the book he refers to an RTP stack that he has written. If this were made available as part of the book it would have been a killer combination.

If I lost this book, I'd buy another one!

I found this book to be well-written, well-organized, and full of useful ideas and explanations on how to recognize performance problems in R/3. The book does not address OS-specific or DB-specific performance problems in detail, but does discuss expensive SQL statements and OS memory issues. There is some discussion of the uniqueness of R/3 memory management on NT. What you will find is a thorough discussion on R/3 memory management, work process distribution, SQL statements, enqueues, table buffering, and much more.

Initially, I was disappointed that there was not a thorough discussion on platform-specific performance issues, but after seeing how well the R/3 aspects are covered, I recommend this book to any R/3 Basis administrator faced with the task of tuning a production system.

The fact that the author is part of SAP's TCC group is obvious. I consider this an advanced text, but written simply enough for even a beginning R/3 adminsitrator to comprehend.

After taking the SAP class Workload Analysis on performance tuning and being thoroughly baffled and confused, I bought a copy of this book. Much clearer and comprehensive than SAP's technical training I like the sections on memory and sql tuning for R/3. If you're a serious Basis admin or consultant you absolutely must get a copy of this book and learn it!

As a product manager that writes product specifications for SAP performance monitoring utilities I have found this book to be invaluable. As you may suspect I have a veritible library of SAP performance, capacity and administration books but I refer to this one 95% of the time. Undoubtedly the best guide ever written on SAP Performance.

I have said before that performance tuning SAP is more art than science... an arguable point. Thomas Schneider's depth of knowledge and experience regarding this tricky task comes clear in this book. Although lacking in specificity when it comes to database or operating systems, there is a world of usefull information about SAP buffers, processes, traces, and SQL tuning for the BC Admin tasked with improving performance without simply buying more hardware. This book is every bit as good as SAP's monitoring class. I would suggest a solid understanding of performance measurement and tuning for your RDBMS and OS as a pre-requisite to this volume.

I'm about half way through this book and it has plenty of detail. It's greatest asset though is clarity. All the chapters/titles/subtitles are extremely self explanatory. One chapter also flows to the next, so it doesn't feel as choppy as many technical books are.

I haven't tried implementing SATA using this book yet, but will do so in the future

Coming from a PCI Express background I was faced with the major challenge of needing to learn a completely new and different bus architecture - SAS and SATA. My company however was committed to developing test solutions for the Storage industry and once again I found myself "needing to go back to school".

Just as I had done before I hooked up with MindShare's knowledge & expertise and got myself their SAS Storage Architecture and SATA Storage Technology books. These priceless tools brought me up to speed on these technologies and saved me from having to drag myself through numerous specs just to learn these interfaces.

I would highly recommend these books to anyone who is looking for a more insightful leaning experience rather than simply reading and mulling though the industry specifications themselves. Mindshare's books truly offer a comprehensive insight into the SAS & SATA architectures, and are written with the engineer's valuable time (and patience) in mind.

Let me agree with "hummingbird lover". The book is indeed a great help to SW developer. The sequences described in the book can be seen in real snapshots. The only difference: in the snapshots your are missing the explaination. :) Also the communication flow and step by step explanation of it is very helpful.

Comparing to the
"Serial ATA Storage Architecture and Applications: Designing High-Performance, Cost-Effective I/O Solutions"
by Knut Grimsrud and Hubbert Smith

I found the Don Andreson's book being less detailed about PHY mechanisms -lacks PHY state machines diagrams. Knut Grimsrud and Hubbert Smith 's book have them. Those diagrams are very helpful during the bring up sessions. Those state machines allowed me "to catch" and explain an incompliancy between my core and example snapshots from the production cores.

From other side using Don Andreson's book trasfer flow diagrams I was able to find a missing case in my algorithm. Fixing it allowed me to track and finnaly recover from the error on a badly working disk.

Both books have the same problem - tiny or no explanation at all about what should SW do in case of the errors returned from SATA HW core.

Summing up I would advice to have both books:
Knut Grimsrud and Hubbert Smith - for first steps in the bring up.
Don Anderson's book - for SW development.

As a hardware engineer, I have been looking for an entry-level book into Serial/ATA technology. And this book fits the bill perfectly. It covers the physical and protocol in adequate detail, but doesn't dwell on finite numbers and measurements (the official sata-io specification has all the engineering data, so there's no need to repeat that in this separate book.)

And most importantly to me, there is a chapter devoted to legacy parallel (legacy) ATA -- although it lacked the detail of the SATA chapters, the 'executive summary' on ATA/IDE was tremendously helpful in explaining how SATA's transport/application protocol fit into the ATA taskfile model.

I guess the only downside is that the book doesn't talk much about the other piece of the puzzle -- (device) firmware and (host) operating-system. For example, the book doesn't go as far as covering the development of a linux/Windows AHCI device-driver. Nor does it cover firmware development for a disk-device.

O'Reilly books are always excellent sources. I'm a technician and work on UNIX systems with the SCO interface, so I use this book a lot. Any time I can't remember a command, I can thumb through the book or look in the index for what the command does and have it at my fingertips. Thanks, O'Reilly for all your great books of which I have many.

I would recommend this book for ANY user of SCO Unix, from the novice to the sys admin. It nearly every command and option from SCO System V Release 3.2, Version 4.0. In addition, this book also covers several important Unix utilities such as the vi editor, sed, awk, etc.

I would give this book 5 stars except SCO OpenServer has advanced well beyond this level (this edition is from 1993). Most of the information remains accurate, but there are some issues that exist. Keep in mind that there are some additional commands and additional options to existing commands that are not listed. Also, but more rare, there are commands or options that have been removed or changed in the OS. This is not as serious as it may sound as these issues will probably only be noticed by the more advanced users in rare circumstances.

O'Reilly has done it again, bringing Unix users a priceless reference book. The book is well organize into different shells and is easy to read. This book list all the commands with options and an example for it. Novice to SCO Unix should add this to their bookshelves.

This book contains all the basic commands needed by system analysts in an easy to find format. I recommend this book to all SCO Unix technicians and system analysts of SCO Unix systems.

Hands down the most comprehensive set of A+ Certification prep tools available. Meyer's book fails on DOS/Windows. Jones and Landes could have done better. And both Gilster and Groth have a tendency to oversimplify. This is the only suite that will satisfy the knowledge hungry soul. But buyer beware...if you lack either ambition or aptitude, go with the books written by the previously mentioned authors. With "Ultimate...", Mueller, Brooks, and Berkel go beyond what is required to past the tests...they give you what is required to succeed outside in the real, working world. For those who demand only the most comprehensive of study tools, this is indeed the "Ultimate A+ Certification Kit".

This is not review, but just some information on this kit, since the webpage provides very little. The kit consists of 3 items:

Brooks's "A+ Certification Training Guide" (reviewed elsewhere on amazon.com)

Mueller's "Upgrading and Repairing PC's", 10th anniversary edition (reviewed elsewhere on amazon.com)

New Riders "Top Score A+ Certification Test Simulation Software" (sounds similiar to the MacMillan "A+ Certification Testprep Software" reviewed on amazon.com)

This kit COMPLETELY covers EVERYTHING you NEED to ace the A+ exam. It also includes an excellent PC Repair Manual and software with over 1000 practice questions. Most important, it offers you the KNOWLEDGE you need to get a great job OR to start your own PC business (or both). I plan to use it to teach a HIGH SCHOOL class in PC Repair starting Fall '00. My goal will be to have my students A+ certified by the end of the school year. For newbies, I would suggest 90 days of study for each of the 2 tests (this is the max amount of time allowed between tests). The tests cost approximately $100 each. I DO NOT recommend the DUMMIES series. My background: CSCI Instructor, Technology Coordinator, Technical Specialist, User Support Analyst.

If you are at all interested in attaining your A+ professional designation this is the only set of books that you will need. Scott is one of the most knowledgeable PC hardware tech's in the world.

Stan Veit was a pioneer in the realm of personal computers; he was a pioneer to us, the "normal" person, the consumer. He opened the second microcomputer store in the world! The first on the east coast. In this book, he recollects about the machines he sold and the people he met in his store from the mid to late 1970's. He also covers computers of the very early '80's and tells the story of IBM's introduction of the PC in 1981 and what happened to the competition.

Actually, the book, published in 1993, is an expansion of his articles from the "Computer Shopper" magazine where he had a monthly column entitled "What Ever Happened to." It's a collection of individual short computer stories. This is nice because you can jump around and read about the computers which interest you most first.

This book is a must-have in the computer history library! I am about to start a podcast reading this book into audio form.

David Greelish
classiccomputing dot com

This is an absolutely wonderful recollection, particularly because it tries to cover as many "fall through the cracks" microcomputers as it can - including the many S-100 systems of the era. It's amazing how much first-hand contact Stan had with the early players simply by virtue of opening the East Coast's first computer store. The book itself, compiled from his column in Computer Shopper, has a really old-style Garrison Keiller feel to it - the tone is that of an "I was there" hobbyist writing for the benefit of other hobbyists. Big points for coverage of the ultra-obscure Video Brain and the Exidy Sorcerer, along with flying in the corporate jet with Charles Tandy in the earliest days of the TRS-80. Despite its completeness, coverage of the Commodore-Amiga is almost completely left out. For that, read "On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore" by Brian Bagnall.

Stan Veit opened the first computer store east of California, then he was Computer Editor of Popular Electronics Magazine. Then he founded and was Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Computer Shopper Magazine. Veit writes about the inside of the new PC industry. This book is entaining and informative to all. Illustrated with historical photos

Stan Veit has brought his personal observations to this wonderful book covering the early years of personal computing. Veit is a microcomputer pioneer, having opened one of the first computer stores in the nation (Computer Mart in NYC) and having been editor of Computer Shopper, a magazine that, in the old days, was so thick with ads you could use it as a boat anchor.

Stan relates how he got laid off from his job as a technical writer in 1975 and decided to start a business, and one area where he could get in on the ground floor was personal computing. The Altair, along with other kit comuters and components, was for sale by mail order, but, Veit figured, supposing people could walk into a store and buy a computer, along with helpful books and free advice? Veit's store gave New Yorkers their very first chance to see and try using a real computer. Veit gives ample credit to his wife Dede who worked as a New York City teacher to support the couple during the lean beginning years.

Over the years he was involved with selling and writing about microcomputers Veit got to know many of the luminaries of early computing, including Les Solomon of Popular Electronics, who had kicked off the revolution when he promoted the Altair and featured it on the magazine's cover in January 1975. Veit had a chance to try all the early S-100 computers and this book is a source of information about each one. One of his interesting stories is about Sphere, a company in Utah that produced products that Veit says never worked well or never worked at all. He also explains that these early companies were so poorly financed that often customers paid Computer Mart in advance for the product and the store passed the money on to the manufacturer who then built the product. It was all forward financing.

Veit's book is so valuable for its eye-witness accounts of legendary events that I used it as a source for my own book, Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution. My book is about the years my husband David and I spent selling software for the Radio Shack TRS-80. Veit has a wonderful story about a visit from Charles Tandy who wanted to discuss an upcoming product, the Model I computer they planned to sell in their 3500 Radio Shack stores nationwide. Tandy invited Veit to fly back to Fort Worth in his corporate jet and see this new addition to the fledgling microcomputer market. When he saw what they had, Veit was convinced people would pay $900 for a microcomputer this good. But Charles Tandy informed him that the TRS-80 would sell for $600. When Tandy asked him how many they should build, Veit told him he'd better build at least 50,000 of them to meet the instant demand it would create. But the TRS-80 went on to exceed even this expectation and Tandy Corp piled up over 200,000 orders in the first year alone!

Stan Veit's book is a valuable source for anyone who wants to know more about the fascinating, and largely unkown, history of personal computing.

Are you afraid of your computer? Need to figure out what the kids know? Is it time to jump on the computer bandwagon but worried about falling down? Join Michael Bremer in this humorous and commonsense book to lose your fear and become more in tune with today's technology. Bremer manages to put everything into perspective and make learning about the computer more enjoyable. His main goal is to help you conquer your fear of computers by learning what might happen if you push the

wrong button. Afraid of breaking your computer? Losing your data? Getting a virus? Bremer goes over these details with refreshing clarity and simplicity. And he is reassuring in his assessment of computer "damage," unlike the doomsday press notices we see each day about computer failures. Truly a worthwhile book for those with computer anxiety. - The Science Spiders Newsletter

Taming the Electronic Beast with a subtitle Conquering Computer Fear is a well written book from writer Michael Bremer who calls himself The Neighborhood Nerd. The illustrations are clever. This easy to read book would be an ideal gift for anyone who is hesitant about making their first purchase of a computer. Bremer really taps into the basics with his Computer Attitude Tests. A good read.

Taming The Electronic Beast: Conquering Computer Fear is "must" reading for anyone who is even the slightest bit uncomfortable with computers and computer technology. Designed and written specifically for the computer phobic, Taming The Electronic Beast is the perfect "non-user friendly" introduction for those who must become computer literate for reasons of business, education, or simply giving in to the demands of their kids (or grandkids!). Michael Bremer has a positive knack for explaining in clear, ordinary language (nicely laced with humor) how computers work and what can be done with them. Bremer cleanly and clearly demystifies the computer and in the process, instills within the reader a new found confidence -- thereby opening up whole new worlds of information technology.

I read Michael Bremer's book, Taming The Electronic Beast, cover to cover, and found it fun, very entertaining and inspiring. In fact, I was so inspired I spent six hours recently learning basics on my computer without a single moment of stress. It was the most fun I've had yet on the Beastly Bin of Boorish Banality! (See three-part insult starter kit in book.) I've had a pc for about three years now, and whenever the thought of trying to use it appeared, I would feel aversion to even turning it on. I avoided spending time on it because I saw it as a joyless waste of time. I simply wanted to be able to turn it on and know how to use it without spending too much time. The suggestions and the voice of the book changed my attitude. I now see the time spent during the learning phase is not a waste. The Edison example was inspiring, and the idea that learning something new exercises the brain makes the learning curve much more palatable. And making mistakes represents progress. I knew all this, but I needed a reminder. I see the light and it looks like fun! I loved the humor of the book. Just the thought of embarrassing my computer with a pair of big, pink, floppy, ears makes me smile. The three-part insult starter kit has the potential to be very useful in many situations. And I may even try spending some time on a computer game or two. I hear The Sims is quite entertaining. Really, the book was been very helpful. I'm loaning it to my Mother now. We're both looking forward to future Advice From The Neighborhood Nerd books. There are many questions beginners have. For many people it is a challenge to become computer literate. We appreciate having someone like the neighborhood nerd out there to hold our hands, and the voice of the book was comforting. I recommend it to anyone preparing to learn about computers.

This is an excellent Manual for those working in the real world as PC techs. I would caution as I dont fell it may be for beginners. I think you should have a solid foundation in PC basics like I/O, Busses, DMA etc before coming to this. Some diagrams are not as descriptive as the could be. I guess I am spoiled with the diagrams in the Micheal Meyers series. However, I feel this is an intermediate book and a great reference for down road. It has been very helpful to me in studying for the exams in certain areas. There are only a few criticisms I have: No voltages on the CPU Reference charts. Also, I had hard time finding a few things like how many devices on Firewire chain and a few others critical things on the list of Objectives. I do believe it is all there but it seems like the author go's into to much time in giving overviews of the various new technologies. Things I feel you should already have a firm grasp of. Dont get me wrong this is huge manual and is packed with useful information. Many applications are covered and the OS coverage is outstanding. All in all its a great Reference.

If you want to learn about PC, this is the book for you. Have you ever gotten the dreaded blue screen of death in Windows, which could be an exception error or a Windows Stop error. This book will explain what these errors are and how to troubleshoot them. Besides going over DOS, Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, this book gives you an easy to understand yet thorough understanding of hardware and software and how to troubleshoot problems with both. It also explains the differences between all of the processors produced by Intel and AMD and explains the differences between all of the different types of RAM. In addition, if you want to pursue the A+ certification, this book has everything for you to take and successfully pass the exams and help you find the job that you want.

As you probably already know, the PC market is a fast paced, fast changing arena. The only way to succeed in this career field is to learn the basic concepts of the PC (hardware and software), apply those concepts in a real-world situation and be willing to retrain yourself often through out your career. Therefore, as a college teacher for many years and working as a PC support/network administrator person for a local college, a city hall, a computer company and a chip manufacturer, I am able to share my experiences in a way that you can quickly and easily learn the material so that you can pass the A+ PC Technician exam, get a job as PC technician and to successful troubleshoot PC problems.

Each chapter is written in an easy to read format with many pictures. To keep you updated today's issues and to show you where you can get help in troubleshooting today's PC problems, I have included many useful Internet links and have include many real-world examples. At the end of each chapter, you will find review questions to help focus your efforts and prepare for the A+ exam and hands-on exercises to reinforce and apply what you have just read about. At the end of book there are several appendix for quick reference and a handy glossary.

For now, I would like to say good luck on your current and future endeavors and I thank you for considering purchasing my book.

Okay you want to learn more about computers and how to troubleshoot them. You eventually want you're A+ certification, and you think you need to buy to book in order to do this, right? Wrong, Prentice Hall has just combine the two and Troubleshooting the PC is that answer.

Covering all aspects of the technician's world, from the sound card and modem to the memory and ports to the video and storage, as well as the operating systems from DOS, Windows 3.x, 95, 98 and NT workstation, the book is great reference. Best of all it is written to the A+ specifications.

The books includes questions, hands-on exercises, figures, tables, pictures and over 650 A+ questions. You also get appendices for A+ Objectives, Binary number conversions, POST Error codes and operating systems error codes, a virtual plethora of computer information.

The author includes a detailed glossary; about the only thing that was missing was the "standard" cd-rom with A+ questions and software utilities. Overall I was very impressed with the depth of information and the author's ability to uncomplicated the breakdown of the information.

This is the best book that you will find if you want to learn how to fix computers (including motherboard problems, harddrive problems, sound cards and Windows problems) or prepare for the A+ Exam. I found it very helpful in troubleshooting a some of my friends computers and it had information that was not included in many other computer troubleshooting books. In addition, I found the book was easy to understand, it imparted a lot of 'real-world' experience and had lots of examples. Lastly, I think it gave me a good foundation, not to mention some confidence, to pursue my MSCE certification. I strongly recommend this book and is well worth the money.

There is a saying 'better late than never!', so I'm writing this review. I just borrowed this book from the library looking for a way to understand classes, constructors and destructors, and fortunately I found them here in this book! I esp. like chapter 3 & 4, and I bought my own copy from Amazon as I am very pleased!
I hope Mr.Jamsa will follow this up with another for Visual Basic 2005 or 2008.

Chapter 12 dissects assemblies and covers versioning. I am moving from the Java world--understand manifests in Jar files. This as good discussion.

Explained reflection in great deal ... things now make sense. Was able to convert the demo program that queried itself (types of objects--their methods, attributes, ...) into a ASP page that performs a very generic sort of ado.net data. Very cool.

Covers all aspects of VB.NET. The discussion on threads demonstrates classic coding -- locks, monitors, and more -- the code works!

Good coverage of ASP.NET and Web services.

Recommend!