PC ANNOYANCES
How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer
Book Review by Gerhard R. FischerThe author of the book on hand is a contributing editor of PC World and many other publications. He is also the founder--and longtime leader--of the Pasadena, CA IBM User Group and a cofounder of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups. This surely explains his familiarity with the long list of PC annoyances and their fixes which he describes.
The book is divided into several sections: E-Mail; Windows; Internet; Microsoft Office; Windows Explorer; Music, Video, and CDs; and Hardware. Just browsing around in the various chapters the reader finds numerous annoying problems that he or she has encountered over the years.
A few random examples may suffice to demonstrate some of the annoyances described:
How to hide long e-mail recipient lists.
How to enable/disable the Hibernate feature in Windows XP.
How to set Google to search for references in selected languages only.
How to save and back up accumulated AutoCorrections in Word.
How to get rid of the more than annoying, talking paperclip in Word.
How to turn off AutoFormatting in Powerpoint.
How to speed up Windows Explorer or how to use Explorer alternatives.
How to restore a missing volume icon to the system tray.
How to quickly convert audio files.Rather than making this list infinitely long, I suggest that the reader go to O'Reilly’s
Web site for a list of the URLs of all the fixes mentioned throughout the book.http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pcannoy/annoyance_download.csp
Five annoyances and their fixes not covered in the book can be found at
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2003/10/29/pcannoyances.html
and give a flavor of the book and its style.
PC ANNOYANCES
How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer
By Steve Bass
O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472
US $19.95 US - CAN $30.95
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