Hardware Books

The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh is a great book and a great bargain especially in the paperback edition.It's highly recommended!!!

This book takes the reader through the ins-and-outs of the modern PC. Explanations are well written and aided by graphics when needed.

MPEG-1,2,and 4 make multimedia content available, while MPEG-7 makes content accessible, retrievable, and filterable. This book is all about the MPEG-7 standard, its implementation, and its applications. The book is divided into six sections which I describe as follows:
Section 1, the introduction, introduces the MPEG-7 standard, history, and its motivation.
Section 2, "Systems", covers system architecture, the description definition language (MPEG-7 is expressed in XML), and the binary format for MPEG-7.
Section 3, "Multimedia Description Schemes", describes the organization of multimedia features that can be described with MPEG-7. This section shows how search, retrieval, filtering, navigation, and browsing are supported by certain MPEG-7 tools. The next two sections are the most fascinating for people involved in multimedia description and retrieval.
Section 4, "Visual Descriptors", discusses how MPEG-7 can describe visual components of images and video for efficient retrieval. Color is described in multimedia via color histograms, dominant color, and color layout. There are also texture descriptors as well as shape descriptors and motion descriptors all present in MPEG-7 to "describe" visual information.
Section 5, "Audio Descriptors", likewise, describes how audio can be indexed via specific descriptors of its content that are far less obvious than those for vision. These include automatic speech recognition techniques, finding spectral similarities, and the use of hidden Markov models. The descriptors are both high and low level. Low level descriptors use the power and the spectrum of the audio signal for data matching and description. High-level tools include melody descriptions in the case of music, recognition of words spoken, log attack time, and even "query by humming".
Section 6, "Applications", shows applications for MPEG-7 that are broadly classified into search/browsing applications and mobile applications. The browsing applications mentioned include real time video retrieval, browsing TV news broadcasts, and audio music retrieval.
A DVD is included that contains technical reports, working demos, and the official MPEG-7 reference software. The DVD demos include using MPEG-7 for video browsing and also searching for images using texture as a descriptor.
The tone of the book is academic, but there are many examples in the book that really clarify the use and expression of the standard. I recommend it to anyone interested in MPEG-7. To get the most out of the book you should already be familiar with XML, information storage and retrieval techniques, and the field of computer vision. Due to the diverse background required to really understand the book, I wouldn't let the low Amazon sales rank scare you - it really is a five star book on the subject! Also, notice that used copies can be found on Amazon Marketplace for a fraction of what a new book costs.

I really loved this book and found it very useful. If anyone is into multimedia systems, this is a must have book.

One of the most respected names in the A+ and IT industry has to be Mike Meyers; his All in One Study guide is simply one of the best books on the market. Now Mike has gone and released an add-on to the book that will make the learning of the A+ material easier to understand and comprehend.

Looking through the book brings back so many memories for me over the past 15 years and reading through the material I found a wealth of information, that I was able to pass on to my A+ classes. From cover to cover the information is nothing short of amazing and takes apart the pc from stem to stern and allows you to put it back together.

The breakdown is some of the best classroom material I have ever seen and I have been teaching for over 5 years and A+ for over 4. This book covers the hard drives, including FDISK and Disk Management within NT and 2000. I was hard pressed to find a hardware topic that wasn't covered; there is even material on joysticks and musical instruments.

If you are looking for a breakdown of the hardware exam for A+ than you might want to grab a copy of this book. For the instructor out there this book is a great addition to the classroom material. I think that the next release should have a cd with hardware utilities, but overall this is another outstanding effort from Mike Meyers.

This book is written in fairly simple language is is not difficult to comprehend. On the other hand, it talks about very advanced technologies that use completely new medium of computer structure. It's just extremely interesting to read. If this technology will work in the future, becoming practical rather than theoretical, our world will never be the same.

Compared to the author's Cisco book, this is by far his best book. Beautifully written, easy to understand and nicely illustrated, you will learn an a lot about Microsoft's implementation of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) in the Windows 2000 environment.

Seven hundred pages provide an overview the TCP/IP architecture and Internet standards, then guides you through TCP/IP installation and configuration. Additional lessons cover IP addressing and routing, subnetting, and the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Explains the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS), domain functions, name resolution and implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS). Discusses connectivity issues in heterogeneous environments. Reviews guidelines and introduces IP network troubleshooting.

The author really did his homework in comparing normal TCP/IP functionality versus what Microsoft's think TCP/IP should function as. Throughout the book, you will find "Author's Note" pointing out these differences.

If you're using iPhoto 2 or even iLife, get this one. It is easy to read and full of information that you can actually use. Check it out!

I was surprised by how good this book is. I browsed it an Apple store and paid [item price] for it there. I think of myself as almost an iPhoto expert, I read the many online sources, I read the manual, I know a lot of the weird shortcuts, etc. etc.

Even so, I learned a lot from a few minutes with this book. The advice on ordering photo books is alone worth the cost of the book. I can't judge how readable it is for a novice, but it's very clearly written and the pictures are excellent. I think it would work well for a novice too.

The author uses photos of his son Tristan throughout the book. Hopefully by the time Tristan is a teenager he will not have access to this book.

Really, a super book. There's no Apple provided iPhoto manual and the online help file is somewhat feeble. Buy this book.

Having received training directly from the author, I can tell you that he is spot on. Look at all of his books, he is a network madman!