Electronics Books

QuarkXpress used to rule the world of layout and Pagemaker was a program produced by Aldus. At least that's the way it was when I began my career in graphic design. I started on a PC platform using Pagemaker. After struggling with file formats and printing issues for a year, I convinced my employer to make the jump to QuarkXpress on Macintosh. My justification was that the incurred cost of new equipment and software would be paid back in reduced printing setup fees, as well as more efficient production time.

Long story short, I happily abandoned Pagemaker for over a decade, and became an ardent supporter of Quark products. In the meantime, Pagemaker was bought by Adobe and was morphed into InDesign. At first, I ignored it, since Quark had been proven to be a stable and consistent program. But, as most Quark fans, I eventually started to see how the company was resting on its laurels. Adobe was on the cutting edge, and Quark has seen a major drop in use.

They say all things go in circles, and that was the case for me when I changed jobs and was given a shiny new PC with Adobe InDesign. I had to relearn Pagemaker again, along with dozens of new features. Simply put, this book is exactly what you need.

InDesign has tons of great features, and chances are you won't know about half of them without this. And best of all, it explains things in a way that you'll understand.

If you are using QuarkXpress now, you won't be for long. You'll need this.

The collaborative effort of QuarkXPress experts David Blatner, Christopher Smith, and Steve Werner, InDesign For QuarkXPress Users is an impressive reference tool for those who are already basically proficient in QuarkXPress software and want to learn Adobe InDesign for the creation of professional graphics. Straightforward instruction, numerous screenshots and examples, and an easy-to-follow language makes InDesign For QuarkXPress Users an excellent and thoroughly "user friendly" informational and reference resource for a very rapid learning curve.

I too was terrified to make the switch from Quark to InDesign. I consider myself to be a Quark "power user" and was so comfortable in the program that I found it scary to leave. I recently saw David speak at the Digial Design Conference in Seattle and I felt assured that the time had come to make the switch - or become a technological dinosaur. So after seeing David speak I purchased the book myself to "test the waters." WOW. I was amazed by the things that InDesign allows me to do - such as dealing with transparency issues and no longer needing to save files as EPS to place in a layout program.

Keeping files in their native Photoshop or Illustrator layered format is PHENOMENOL. I saw live examples of the types of files I would use and the book gives detailed information on making the switch. It just makes sense - it's like the people who still use PageMaker?! Either catch up with technology or find yourself in the same job in 10 years. I can never imagine going back to Quark, and this book is my tour guide (and bible) to life in the new digital world.

Oh, and never again will I have to hold down the return key for an hour to update my images. Life is good.

I had Dr. Shanefield as a professor at Rutgers for many courses especially in the area of electronic ceramics and I enjoyed his classes.

This book is a great book because:

- It makes a typically complicated subject manner like electronics and circuits understandable and enjoyable.

- It is simple, easy to follow and very well organized.

- College courses focus in on the theory where this book provides the theory and most important the applications to practice and further understand.

I think this is a great book to have at your personal disposal. I would also like to state that my food scientist wife who hated electronics because she didn't understand it, now enjoys this subject matter and has a great deal of fun performing and understanding the labs. I too enjoy performing the labs as well.

Kudos Dr. Shanefield !

I had Dr. Shanefield as a professor at Rutgers for many courses especially in the area of electronic ceramics and I enjoyed his classes.

This book is a great book because:

- It makes a typically complicated subject manner like electronics and circuits understandable and enjoyable.

- It is simple, easy to follow and very well organized.

- College courses focus in on the theory where this book provides the theory and most important the applications to practice and further understand.

I think this is a great book to have at your personal disposal. I would also like to state that my food scientist wife who hated electronics because she didn't understand it, now enjoys this subject matter and has a great deal of fun performing and understanding the labs. I too enjoy performing the labs as well.

Kudos Dr. Shanefield !

This book is both lab manual and textbook, so if you do not have the exact measuring instruments the labs call for, you can skip lots of sections where the author really gets into setting the tests up. The primary value of this book for me were the clear explanations that came with the labs on how electronic components worked; but more importantly, how they related to one another and what they mean in a circuit. This book provides some valuable intuitive insights necessary to understand electronics, and I haven't seen this level and concentration of lucid discourse in any other electronics textbooks so far. This is a must-get book for anyone unfamiliar with electronics!

This book presents an excellent review of the last fifty years of information theory, since the days of Claude Shannon. The material in this book is well-compiled and comprehensive. A "must" for any person interested in the flow of Information Theory over time!

Out of all of the IEEE collections of papers which are published in book format.... I truly believe that this is by far the best. The papers, were specially written for the October 1998 edition of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory for the Golden 50th Anniversery of information theory, a field which was arguably started in 1948 with Claude Shannon's publication of The Mathematical Theory of Communications in the Bell Systems Technical Journal.

This collection of papers is from famous authors such as Sergio Verdu, Costello, Cover, Calderbank, Robert Grey, Neuhoff, Berger, Gibson, Proakis, etc.. Most of the papers are survey papers with phenominal references so you can pursue your interest further. Also, since these are survey papers (meaning "tutorials"), unlike most of the usual papers published in Transactions on IT, these are accessable (understandable) to the average person who does not specialize in digital communications or information theory.

The collection of papers is a true delight, bar none, the best tutorial papers I've ever seen written, anywhere. This book is worth thousands of leisurly hours of reading. But don't worry... if your looking for some deep technical stuff, or deep historical coverage of certain topics... there are also papers in the book which fit that criterion. Something for everybody at any level of expertise.

McLaughlin was the editor of the Trans on Info Theory then, and Verdu was the guest editor for the 50th anniversary special issue. The main content of the book is identical to this issue of the transaction except for pages renumbered. The major difference is the improved paper and printing quality :-)

The issue was an excellent collection of great tutorial papers on various important topics. Obviously Verdu did a superb job as the guest editor, besides one article by himself. Cover and Thomas is an excellent information theory textbook, but the coverage and depth are sometimes limited to be a well organized textbook. This book (or T-IT Oct 1998) fills in many parts where Cover and Thomas left untouched. In addition, each review paper by top researchers of the field comes with relatively exhaustive listing of references.

Minor, but important addition in the book part is the indeces. Name index to the name of authors of literatures cited is of great value.

The most important difference of this book from the Transactions is that it comes with a CD-ROM of all reference entries since the Trans on Info Theory began, and the entries are well organized and fully linked. All is in HTML format except for PDF files for the papers contained in the book. Therefore the CD-ROM does not depend on a particular platform (I work at a Microsoft free environment, so I couldn't comment on the CD-ROM otherwise)

For the value of the papers, and the effort required to compile and maintain the complete list of journal refernces are well worth your money to keep a copy, especially because there aren't many info theory books.

This book is the best resource for Exchange development, written by the developers who work on Exchange Web Services (EWS) this book is a must-have for any developer that is thinking about writing applications against Exchange. I can't recommend it enough for the examples, in depth explanations, and entertaining writing :)

This book is a must for all developers that want to benefit from the new Exchange Web Services protocols. MSDN documentation is not that great, but the book explains the internals, data types and procedures, giving clear examples. You can't go wrong with it, especially when developing using .NET

This book is not only powerful, but is a must have for anyone developing against Exchange Server either now or in the future. The explanations are both thorough as well as detailed and make it easy for those who have never written web services to get started. The examples are fantastic and complete and in no time at all I was able to get started. I would recommend this book to anyone, new programmers or experienced. Fantastic book!

I have used this book for years and it has never failed to provide the information necessary to troubleshoot and repair problems with measurement systems. Liptak does a wonderful job presenting measurement theory and the principles of operation of various measurement strategies. The most helpful information Liptak includes is the discussion of the limitation of various measurement devices. If you are responsible for the maintenance of a wide variety of instruments and you desire to know how those instruments work, this book is worth every penny.

Excellent book. I second Mr. Hills comments, although I have recently purchased the books based upon comments Mr.Liptak has made in the control mailing list. It is a very good investment. The book is easy to read/understand, covers the full spectrum of instrumentation,give relative costs and companies manufacturing the items. It is a good first book to turn to, and will save me much research time. I wish I would have known about it earlier.

The book cover almost every single instrument used in the process industry for Process measurement and Analysis of the most common process variables. The book covers Flow, Level, Temperature, Pressure, Density, Safety and Miscellaneous Sensors (Vibration, Shock, acceleration, torque, noise, etc.)

One of the aspect that I find more appealing is that at the beginning of each chapter you find an application and selection oriented overview and an orientation table for the process variable covered in that chapter of the book. The tables list all the different types of sensors and summarize the features and capabilities, as well as approximated prices, accuracies and characteristics of each one. If you need a sensor for a particular application, you can narrow your options and then go to the sections of the book that covers in details the selected sensors.

If you work with Industrial Instrumentation you will find this book to be a very valuable tool in your day to day job, either if you specify, install, maintain or operate them.

This handbook has almost 2000 pages of really useful information.

I have been working in the Process Industries for more than 16 years as an Automation, Instrumentation, Process Safety and Process Control Engineer. I consider this book to be the very best in the field, and it is really an Excellent reference for anyone and everyone working in these areas or in areas related with their Industrial applications.

The first edition was published in 1969, the second edition was released in 1982 (Volume 1) and 1985 (Volume 2). This latest edition comprises over 3000 pages between the 2 volumes. Each volume includes 8 chapters with many sub-headings per chapter.

The Flow Measurement (29 sub-headins) and Analytical Instrumentation (60 sub-headings) chapters were heavily revised for the 1995 edition of VOLUME 1. PLC's & Other Logic Devices (10 subheadings), DCS & Computer-based Systems (16 sub-headings) and Process Control Systems (27 sub-headings) were largely rewritten for the 1995 edition of VOLUME 2. Within each product-oriented sub-heading (eg. Magnetic Flowmeters, Infrared Analyzers, DCS Basic Packages), in addition to extensive treatment of the applicable technology, a comprehesive listing of manufacturers and typical price ranges is provided. Under Process Control Systems, a diverse group of applications (Airhandler Controls, Clean Room Controls, Distillation Advanced Controls, Compressor Controls, Reactor Control & Optimation and many others) is profiled. Throughout this handbook, process control is treated in the time-domain to minimize mathematical complications implicit in frequency-domain analysis. Its focus is the practicding engineer and explains most control phoenomena visually.

Over 250 contributing authors are listed, including many prestigious names immediately recognizable by process control professionals. Liptak personally authored a substantial number of revised and up-dated easlier contribution of pioneering practitioners. This opus is a tour de force.

Liptak is a long-time industrial consultant, teaches a graduate course in advanced process control at Yale and writes the widely-followed Lessons Learned feature in CONTROL magazine. He has also lectured at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and been published on the editorial pages of the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

This book is a Must Have in your Engineering Library.
Liptak provides extensive detail for this to be your one-stop-shop for controls as well as a great introduction & encyclopedia for the rookies.
Hats off to Liptak and his team.
Just brace yourself for the 1,500 pages of information !! ;)

Absolutely the Very Best Process Control Reference for the Process Control Engineer - Now Updated and Expanded !!. This is the second volume of the Instrument Engineer's Handbook, and. as its title suggests, it deals with Process control and Optimization, covering everything from Control Hardware, Control Theory, Control Strategies, and the Control and Optimization of Specific Unit Operations.

The Chapters on Control Hardware cover in detail transmitters, controllers, control valves, regulators and other types of final control elements, PLCs, and other logic devices, human interfaces and displays, including the design of control rooms.

The Chapters on Control Theory and Control Strategies covers everything from control basics and PID controllers, to tuning methods, stability, process characteristics, process modeling and simulation, model-based control, genetic and other evolutionary algorithms, fuzzy logic programming, neural networks and other advance control strategies.

The Chapters on Control and Optimization of Unit Operations provide both in-depth of both the theory of operation and control, and practical implementation for the control of pumping, distillation, chemical reaction, heat transfer and many other.

While evaluating and reviewing such sophisticated topics about Process Control, this handbook also tries and succeeds to provide and reinforce the reader with the most useful tool for the Automation and Control Engineer: Common Sense. In order to emphasize the importance of Common Sense, the Author gives some practical recommendations that include the following ones:

- Before we can control a process, one must fully understand it.
- Being progressive is good, but being a guinea pig is not. Therefore is the wrong control strategy is implemented, the performance of even the most advanced digital hardware will be unacceptable.
- And Instrumentation, Automation, and Process Control Engineer or Technician is doing a good and better job by telling plant management what they need to know, and not what they like to hear.
- If an instrument is worth installing, it should also be worth calibrating and maintaining. No device can outperform the reference against it was calibrated.
- Trust your common sense not the sales literature. Independent performance evaluation based on the recommendation of international and national users associations should be done before installation, and not after it.

I am an Industrial Practitioner of Process Measurement & Control. I have been working in the Process Industries for more than 16 years as an Automation, Instrumentation, Process Safety and Process Control Engineer. I consider this book to be the very best reference in the field for anyone and everyone working in these areas or in areas related with their Industrial applications. You will find this handbook useful, either if your work is related with the engineering, maintenance or operation of Process Control Systems.

If you are a beginner to Process Control, you may also want to consider "Process Dynamics, Modeling, and Control (Topics in Chemical Engineering)" by Babatunde A. Ogunnaike, which is an excelent introductory reference to Chemical Processes Dynamics and Control.

What a find. For those of you who are interested in the technical history of WWII, this book is essential reading. It's a clear and lucid description of the radar and countermeasures battle of the British Air Force over Germany. It tells the story in chronological order, but with just right amount of context to make this exciting reading (even when you know how the story ends.)

Its strength is its only weakness. I only wished the author could have had written the equivalent radar/countermeasures story about the US Air Force in WWII.

BTW, the second edition adds a superfluous chapter on the radar/countermeasures battle over North Vietnam. The lack of declassified information makes this a much weaker addition to a great book.

If you stumble across a copy of this wonderful book be certain to grab it. It starts as the story of the cat and mouse game over Europe as teams of radar engineers engaged in a technological battle to win the air war. From developing radio navigation aids for bombers to then jamming the enemy's own navigation systems, to providing threat warning radars for night bombers, and then having night fighters turn the tables by using the enemy's threat warning radar as a homing beacon. They'd make further developments in radar, jamming, chaff, and the measure and counter-measure cycle would begin again. The book follows the deadly game up through Vietnam, with missiles, missile jammers, and radar homing missiles thrown into the mix.

The book doesn't require anything more than a layman's knowledge of electronics, radio, or radar, and how can you pass up a book filled with quotes like "Radio aids contain boxes with coils, and I don't like boxes with coils - Hermann Goring"?

This book is no longer in print, and it is quite hard to come by at any price. It is, however, a very fine book on the origins of directional beams and radar. It is also a book about patient investigation, deduction, and rather understated courage in unpressurized, draughty aircraft in the cold night skies over Europe. It leaves the reader with the image of the navigator, barely out of high school, cramped and shivvering in the dark in the deafening piston engine roar of a Lancaster, hunched over the green glow of a relatively primitive cathode ray tube, hour-by-hour, trying to guess the right way through the clutter and the static, being afraid of unseen dangers and praying for dear life to get back safely to England. If you happen to come across a copy by chance, this is a book that will repay your attention many times over. It is a shame that it is (a) so little known; and (b) out of print.

I am involved in an infringement team at work and needed to learn more about patent law. I also am involved in product development and wanted to know about trademarks. I looked at several books and selected this one based on its broad coverage and structured approach.

After receiving the book, I was plesantly surprised to learn it is a graduate level text book. It is well written, well organized, and easy to read and understand. I highly recommend it!

This book is exactly what it says it is: a book for scientists and engineers. The author knows his audience is intellectually capable of handling complex information on legal topics even though they have little or no legal background. I never felt he was talking down to the reader. However, unlike other patent law books I have read that are aimed at future patent lawyers, he does not write on and on about legal theory and philosophical justifications of the patent system. The author sticks to explaining just what the law says, what it means, and how to comply. It is a very practical guide. I especially liked the sections on non-disclosure and patent ownership waivers. These are the contracts scientists and engineers have to sign all the time, even if they end up never patenting anything themselves.

This is a book whose content is something that I should have read years ago. I am a part-time college instructor, have my own business and edit material for publication. In all three of these areas, questions and conflicts regarding intellectual property have arisen.
The colleges that I teach for have policies that dictate that all instructional material and software the instructor creates for the courses become the property of the college. While I have successfully resisted this policy at two colleges, my defense would have been much stronger had I known what I learned from reading this book.
I generally create my own material for the training I do through my business and my clients and I have had occasional minor differences concerning educational and intellectual property rights. There have been a few occasions when I was working as a contractor, and the contracts that were presented had clauses that would have prevented me from doing any work for anyone else that they perceive as one of their competitors. This has been a major point of disagreement; it has taken several hours of intense negotiation to resolve these issues.
In a previous job, my title was that of research scientist. My employers considered applying for patents on some of programs I wrote. This was nearly a decade ago, before software patents were so commonplace, so they never pursued the matter. Finally, I edit a math journal and occasionally write or edit a book.
In reading about the working situations of others, it is clear that my need for knowledge in the area of intellectual property law is not unique. Everyone who invents physical or cyber products should be aware of the legal standing of what they create. Questions concerning copyright and patentability are nowhere near as easy to resolve as you may think. Even if you sign a contract stating that all you make becomes company property, you still retain some, albeit limited, rights to the product. With more and more workers performing tasks on contract and telecommuting, this area is becoming increasingly muddled. The fact that I developed training material on my own time and using my equipment allowed me to successfully resist the attempts of the colleges to acquire the rights.
The first section of the book deals with patents, what they are, how to perform a patent search for prior art, how to obtain one, what can be patented, the requirements for originality and non-obviousness; how to continue the patent process if your application is rejected, how to obtain competent legal assistance, how to enforce patent rights and how to use a patent right as a business asset. I read these sections with fascination, I follow some of the "patent wars" processes in the trade journals, but until I read the material on patents, I never realized how complex the patent process is.
The next section deals with employment contracts and non-compete restrictions, something that affects all workers in the technical areas. It was heartening to read that while employers have a lot of power to enforce non-compete provisions, it is not absolute and workers are generally not denied their right to earn a living using their skills.
The next chapters cover copyright issues, what copyright is, how long it lasts, what the requirements are for originality, what can be copyrighted, the consequences of recent legislation, and mask work protection rights. The final chapters deal with trade secret law, trademarks and cybersquatting.
As I organized my thoughts before beginning this review, the question that I pondered many times and in as many ways as I could think of was: "Is there any area of information technology where a worker would not benefit from reading at least several chapters of this book?" After hours of thought, the answer is that there is no such area. Every line of code you write or alter is potentially part of a patentable product. There is no dispute that intellectual property is rapidly becoming the greatest single asset that many companies have. I have no way of knowing when it will occur, but at some point the worldwide monetary value of intellectual property will exceed that of physical assets. With this backdrop, understanding the basics of intellectual property will become a business skill as essential as knowing the fundamental rules of economics. To some, that is already the case.
Therefore, whatever your position in the intellectual property food chain, this is a book that you must read. I may have learned more valuable information from this book than from any other that I have read. It is definitely on my best books of the year list.

Published in the online Journal of Object Technology, reprinted with permission.

This 2001/02 edition provides a guide to federal government web sites which will prove an invaluable reference for any seeking departments of the Treasury, Justice, HUD, Defense and more. From parks and preserves to air force libraries, Internet Blue Pages is packed with solid reference details which may change of time, but probably not as quickly as the usual web site reference.

As an internet neophyte, I'm having some difficulty navigating. It is wonderful to have such a tool as the Internet Blue Pages, which not only gives you all the government web sites, but has a myriad of links to related sites. Buy this book!

The size of the United States Government has grown by leaps and bounds since its humble beginning a little over two hundred years ago. The founding fathers of this country probably never envisioned such rapid growth. Many of us living today probably wished it hadn't. Anyway, we must live with it. Fortunately, we can all benefit from our tax money at work by logging onto a number of government Websites and glean from the vast amounts of information available at them.

Laurie Andriot has compiled an extensive number of government Websites in Internet Blue Pages to offer her readers a heavy-hitting source of government resources. Information gleaned from these sites can help readers make better business decisions, assist them in finding employment, make it easier for them to obtain veterans services, help them to keep up on the latest Washington news and lawmaking (and law-breaking), and much more!

Readers will be able to access tons of government policy and regulatory information covering a variety of issues, including health, safety, food, finances, employment, military, transportation, civil rights, the arts and sciences, and social issues that affect our country and our way of living. I was quite surprised to see a Website listed for the RAF Mildenhall Air Force Base located in England. I had visited this base a number of times while serving in the Air Force at another base in this same country!

Andriot offers brief but helpful commentary on many of the sites listed, including the historical background and roles of many government offices and agencies we have heard about and perhaps a few we never knew existed! Readers are encouraged to read through these blue pages to learn more about the government that has pledged to serve our best interests.

Regardless of what your opinion is of the current administration and congressional representation, our government has plenty of useful information available to meet a variety of personal and business needs. One can tell by the size of this book that there is plenty to go around. This book provides a heavy dose of it. It is ideal for people who either want to do business with our government agencies or want to learn how best to keep them off their backs!

This book does not focus exclusively on a single topic, but instead provides a well-rounded discussion on all things email-related. For example, it does not focus exclusively on any one messaging implementation, nor does it get bogged down on technical discussions of protocols and message boundaries, but instead it covers these topics (and more) as part of a comprehensive discussion on electronic mail in general.

Each chapter tackles a broad subject and then provides a studied discussion of several touchstone issues related to that discussion. For example, there is a chapter on sending email in an enterprise network which provides ample discussions on several subordinate topics, including an introduction to LDAP directories, a summary discussion on various gateways and integration services that are likely to be used in that kind of environment, and details for configuring popular messaging clients to take advantage of these services.

In this regard, Internet Messaging provides a well-rounded introductory discussion on the subject of Internet email at large, making it perhaps the best novice guide on the market. It is especially well-suited for people who are just stepping into messaging concepts, but advanced users and implementors will also find plenty of useful nuggets.

Important reading for anyone interested in the internet. REQUIRED reading for anyone involved with e-mail, the internet, or e-commerce. I have pre-ordered copies for all my senior staff !!

Having only read an excerpt, it's obvious the authors understand e-mail and the valuable role it plays in business-to-consumer communication. If you have customers online, e-mail is a critical part of your communication/marketing strategy. I'm sure this book will help you develop your winning strategy for e-mail. Like Lenny, I'm buying copies for my senior staff.