Review of PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions (Paperback)

I've had the book for a couple of weeks now, and I keep learning new tricks.Most recently the book taught me how to create screen capture movies that I can e-mail to others.I'm using this trick mostly to create "here's how you do this" videos for my parents, which is a lot easier than trying to talk them through the computer challenge du jour over the phone.

Probably the next most useful sections of the book for me have been the parts covering User Profile managment.I've never found those tasks to be intuitive in WinXP, and the book does a great job of showing me how I can finally get some benefit out of Profiles, rather than the headaches they've been giving me since I got WinXP.

The book has other chapters on these topics, too:
*Working With Digital Cameras
*Making Videos
*Recording & Ripping Music
*Remote Control of Windows XP via the internet
*Using Windows XP as an Internet Server

Plus, of course, chapters on security, backups, installing hardware/software, and the other sorts of topics you'd expect from PC Magazine.

Product Description
* The practical, proven solutions Windows XP users have been looking for-from the source trusted by more than six million readers worldwide, PC Magazine
* Written like the magazine's popular "Solutions" feature, the book helps experienced Windows users work faster and smarter by customizing the interface, circumventing annoying features, and fixing common glitches
* Topics covered range from building a better Start Button and Task Bar, eliminating the new program notification on the Start menu, and cleaning up the Registry after an uninstall to safely removing old drivers, using the recover console after a crash, and dealing with DSL and other broadband connection problems
* Well written and organized for easy reference, the book shows the sixty-seven million Windows XP users how to save time and frustration-and make their PCs work the way they want them to

From the Back Cover
In the event of system failure

Sometimes a Windows XP installation can fail to the point where you can do nothing to save it. You have a number of options open to you, such as attempting to repair the installation and, at the other extreme, reformatting all your hard drives and starting over. However, often the easiest approach is to install a fresh instance of Windows XP on a new hard disk partition and then work from the new installation to recover data from the old installation.
--From Chapter 11, Locating and Migrating User Data

They say there's a solution to everything. When it comes to Windows XP, PC Magazine knows 'em all

Ever wish they'd consulted you before they designed Windows XP? Sure, it's a great system, but there's this one feature that makes you crazy. Or that annoying problem that keeps occurring. Well, you can rely on Neil Randall and your friends at PC Magazine to correct that oversight. Here's the complete compendium of solutions to the things that bug you, threaten your security, slow you down, or other-wise prevent Windows XP from achieving perfection.

You can redesign Windows XP

• Create the interface that works for you
• Tweak your taskbar and control your folders
• Remove the stuff that gets in your way
• Install what you want; dump what you don't
• Unlock hidden settings in Media Player
• Use Group Policy Editor to change the way users interact with their PCs
• Reinstall Windows without losing important files
• Lock it down with the Encrypting File System
• Find helpful features hidden in Outlook Express
• Dig into the Registry to remove every last trace of spyware

Click Here to see more reviews about: PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions (Paperback)

Review of PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions (Paperback)

I've had the book for a couple of weeks now, and I keep learning new tricks.Most recently the book taught me how to create screen capture movies that I can e-mail to others.I'm using this trick mostly to create "here's how you do this" videos for my parents, which is a lot easier than trying to talk them through the computer challenge du jour over the phone.

Probably the next most useful sections of the book for me have been the parts covering User Profile managment.I've never found those tasks to be intuitive in WinXP, and the book does a great job of showing me how I can finally get some benefit out of Profiles, rather than the headaches they've been giving me since I got WinXP.

The book has other chapters on these topics, too:
*Working With Digital Cameras
*Making Videos
*Recording & Ripping Music
*Remote Control of Windows XP via the internet
*Using Windows XP as an Internet Server

Plus, of course, chapters on security, backups, installing hardware/software, and the other sorts of topics you'd expect from PC Magazine.

Product Description
* The practical, proven solutions Windows XP users have been looking for-from the source trusted by more than six million readers worldwide, PC Magazine
* Written like the magazine's popular "Solutions" feature, the book helps experienced Windows users work faster and smarter by customizing the interface, circumventing annoying features, and fixing common glitches
* Topics covered range from building a better Start Button and Task Bar, eliminating the new program notification on the Start menu, and cleaning up the Registry after an uninstall to safely removing old drivers, using the recover console after a crash, and dealing with DSL and other broadband connection problems
* Well written and organized for easy reference, the book shows the sixty-seven million Windows XP users how to save time and frustration-and make their PCs work the way they want them to

From the Back Cover
In the event of system failure

Sometimes a Windows XP installation can fail to the point where you can do nothing to save it. You have a number of options open to you, such as attempting to repair the installation and, at the other extreme, reformatting all your hard drives and starting over. However, often the easiest approach is to install a fresh instance of Windows XP on a new hard disk partition and then work from the new installation to recover data from the old installation.
--From Chapter 11, Locating and Migrating User Data

They say there's a solution to everything. When it comes to Windows XP, PC Magazine knows 'em all

Ever wish they'd consulted you before they designed Windows XP? Sure, it's a great system, but there's this one feature that makes you crazy. Or that annoying problem that keeps occurring. Well, you can rely on Neil Randall and your friends at PC Magazine to correct that oversight. Here's the complete compendium of solutions to the things that bug you, threaten your security, slow you down, or other-wise prevent Windows XP from achieving perfection.

You can redesign Windows XP

• Create the interface that works for you
• Tweak your taskbar and control your folders
• Remove the stuff that gets in your way
• Install what you want; dump what you don't
• Unlock hidden settings in Media Player
• Use Group Policy Editor to change the way users interact with their PCs
• Reinstall Windows without losing important files
• Lock it down with the Encrypting File System
• Find helpful features hidden in Outlook Express
• Dig into the Registry to remove every last trace of spyware

Click Here to see more reviews about: PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions (Paperback)

Review of How to Choose a College Major [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

Comprehensive book on how to choose a college majors, with detailed information about the prospects of each major. Highly recommended.

Product Description
How to Choose a College Major Learn how to weigh the pros and cons of potential majors and their corresponding careers. Includes interviews, statistical data, worksheets, where to get professional guidance, and 21st century trends.

Click Here to see more reviews about: How to Choose a College Major [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

Review of Marketing Management: Knowledge and Skills (Hardcover)

Half the time reading this book is like reading a dictionary. I think I must have read 100 sentences that begin with "XXX can be defined as .... ". The authors do a complete coverage of the topics but in such a dull and routine way it is hard to keep your attention on the reading. On a plus side, there are about 40 case analyses that are pretty good, but of course they weren't written by the authors. Of course if you're like most people, your professor has chosen this book and you have to get it whether you like it or not.

Product Description
Marketing Management: Knowledge and Skills, 7/e, by Peter and Donnelly, serves an overview for critical issues in marketing management.The text strives to enhance knowledge of marketing management and advance student skills so they can develop and maintain successful marketing strategies.The text does this through comprehensive text chapters that analyze that marketing process and gives students the foundation needed for success in marketing management and through 45 cases (16 of them new, many others updated) that go beyond traditional marketing principles and focus on the role of marketing in cross-functional business and organization strategies.

About the Author
J. Paul Peter is another very highly regarded marketing educator and is also at UW-Madison.He has won many awards for his contributions through research, textbooks, and education.

James H. Donnelly, Jr. Is the Turner Professor in the College of Business and Economics, Univ. of Kentucky.Research areas include marketing and banking.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Marketing Management: Knowledge and Skills (Hardcover)

Review of Betting It All: The Entrepreneurs of Technology (Paperback)

After reading Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston, I dived into an older book by Michael Malone. It has the same concept, i.e. interviews of 16 famous technology entrepreneurs. And it is worth reading.

I loved it so much I put a post on my blog, www.startup-book.com and here are again some quotes form the book that I hope will convince otehr people to become readers:

Larry Ellison about uncertainty:

"When everyone said a relational database would never be commercially viable, the reckless guy said "maybe everyone's wrong - maybe I will take a chance with my career and with my cash." It's not a rational process."

Larry Ellison again about entrepreneurs: "I saw outside managers brought into a lot of companies who then made things dramatically worse. I think I was the best person for the job, I knew the company better than anyone else. I knew the technology, the products and the markets. My heroes are people who do not follow convention. It's difficult to innovate when you are like anybody else."

T. J. Rodgers about Silicon Valley: "One of the things that Silicon Valley successful is companies think just about wanting to succeed. It is also a meritocracy. What makes us so special and different is no Java code or biotechnology, it is that we're truly capitalists. About Europe and Japan: We're moving at light speed relative to the Japanese, who probably still have a committee working on the problem and the Europeans, who are trying to work it out politically. "

Tom Siebel about luck: "If you look at the core of many success stories, it's not great visionaries, not great technology, not great entrepreneurs, it's pretty bright people who found themselves in the right place at the right time and managed not to foul up the opportunity."

Gordon Moore about Silicon Valley. "I really measure the thing that's become Silicon Valley from Shockley in 1956. There were earlier technology companies - Hewlett Packard and Varian - but they were more like established companies on the East Coast. Shockley introduced some instability in the system. "

If you want to learn more, read it...

Product Description
"I realized I was willing to die for Java."
-- KIM POLESE, MARIMBA

"I was the opposite of a party animal.I had this thing where if I was signed up for a [college] class, I wouldn't go to the class, ever."
-- BILL GATES, MICROSOFT

"I don't know what made me decide that my life should always be about making love standing up in a hammock, but this is the way that my life has worked out."
-- JERRY SANDERS, ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES

Beyond the media hype and mystique, the high-tech entrepreneurs of our time are just as human as the rest of us-even though they carefully guard their words and maintain their corporate images, making it almost impossible to get a real glimpse of the people behind the legends. Now, Betting It All takes you inside the minds of sixteen of the most famous industry titans-Scott McNealy, Bob Metcalfe, Carol Bartz, Philippe Kahn, and more-through a series of intimate and remarkably candid interviews.You'll be the fly on the wall as these business leaders explore memories from childhood, their dreams, their inspirations, and their unwavering ambition to achieve their goals-no matter the risks involved.

From the Inside Flap
From garages and kitchen tables across America, courageous men and women have built the great technology companies that define modern life.Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Wozniak-the names are as familiar as movie stars; their every move captures headlines and their decisions affect the lives of millions.

But behind the well-crafted personae these men and women present to the world, what are they really like?What makes them tick?What enabled them to make, often in a few short years, the leap from everyday person to industry titan?What drives them to stay at the top?What keeps them from walking away with their riches to a long and easy life?

Betting It All has the revealing answers.Based on the popular PBS series, and containing added material never shown, this book takes a unique, behind-the-scenes look at the lives of sixteen legendary American entrepreneurs. It offers new insights into the hearts and minds of Gates, Ellison, Wozniak, Gordon Moore of Intel, Carol Bartz of Autodesk, Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems, T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor, and others.In intimate interviews, Michael S. Malone, Editor at Large of Forbes ASAP magazine and long-time Silicon Valley chronicler, strips away the myth and exposes the human side of business, digging deep to find the individual beneath the entrepreneur.

You'll hear, in their own words, how these brave people weathered their personal tragedies and savored their triumphs . . . why they take such daring risks . . . and how their deep levels of commitment drove them to reach such lofty goals.You'll be there as:

• Candice Carpenter, cofounder and Chairman of iVillage.com, talks about being a survivor, how living in the mountains prepared her for the Internet, and how sisterhood is now the focus of her life
• Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer Inc., tells how a particular book in sixth grade set him on his life's path and led him into the world of computers
• Larry Ellison, founder, Chairman, and CEO of Oracle Corporation, revisits old wounds from childhood, which sparked his relentless ambition and his need to live out the dreams of his youth

Provocative, personal, and, above all, inspirational, Betting It All reveals surprising and compelling details about each industry giant with every turn of the page.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Betting It All: The Entrepreneurs of Technology (Paperback)

Review of PHP Professional Projects (Paperback)

This book was a great disappointment! I am building a large application in PHP and was looking for some good project planning strategies and patterns. Instead I found the usual shopping cart examples written as if for a small scale project. The code snippets are full of white space and a few lines of code takes up an entire page, hence it is hard to follow. What little code I did try was full of errors and bad syntax. This book does not have a CD with it so you must type in all the code that you may want to start with. I suggest the book 'Web Applications Development with PHP 4.0' for your true professional projects.

Product Description
This book provides a hands-on approach to learning PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, which is a server-side scripting language. The book is aimed at both novice as well as advance level readers. Readers might only have the basic knowledge of HTML or might already know Web-based programming. The readers will use the PHP concepts that they learn in the book to create professional projects.

The book starts with a few overview chapters that cover the key concepts of Web-based programming. These chapters act as an information store for programmers who may need to brush up their prior programming knowledge. A major part of the book revolves around professional projects. These projects enable programmers to learn about various tasks by following a simple to complex approach. Each project covers a specific subject area and guides the readers by using practical scenarios. The projects range from a simple project that involves creating plain data entry Web pages using HTML and saving the information in a text file. Then the books moves to complex projects that involve creating Web pages containing PHP scripts and storing information in MySQL databases. These projects help programmers to accomplish their goals by understanding the practical and real-life application of PHP in Web page designing. Each project in the book is a guide for the reader to create a part of a large Web site.

Apart from the overview chapters and the professional projects, this book also includes two additional sections, Beyond the Lab and Appendices. The Beyond the Lab section serves as both a summary of what the reader has learned throughout the projects and as a road map for where the reader can go to expand on this knowledge. This section also covers the future direction of the programming language. The Appendices act as a quick reference for PHP functions and certain concepts that a reader might want to explore further.

Use PHP to accomplish real-world, professional tasks.

Incorporating five hands-on projects, PHP Professional Projects is your key to unlocking the power of PHP. Each project focuses on a specific PHP concept and is based on a real-world situation. You will be able to use the skills that you develop throughout the book to modify the projects as needed to fit your professional needs.

CREATE A USER REGISTRATION FORM

Using various form elements, create a user registration form for an online shopping site. You will use PHP script to track form value and check for errors. Your PHP script will give you experience using variables, operators, and control structures.

STORE AND RETRIEVE DATA FROM FILES

Using the registration form that you have just created, you will learn how to store data in a file and to retrieve the data using various file functions. You will learn the basics of file handling such as reading and writing to a file as well as pack and unpack functions.

WORK WITH MYSQL USING PHP

Begin by creating a database table and inserting data with a form and PHP script. Query your database table based on specific criteria and allow results to be displayed. Further your understanding of handling data storage and using PHP with a SQL database.

CREATE A CATALOG AND SHOPPING CART

Cover all of the steps necessary to create a product catalog and shopping cart with PHP begin-ning with user registration. Learn how to add and remove products and customers and to send a feedback message using the mail function.

MASTER USER AUTHENTICATION AND TRACKING

Learn how to configure HTTP authentication on Apache and to create users. Begin with the basics of password-based authentication and password storage. Then create a PHP script that will validate users, and learn how to use cookies and sessions to track users.

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Review of Network+ Certification Bible (With CD-ROM) (Hardcover)

I bought this book, along with the Network+ Passport by Mike Meyers and passed the test with no problem. I'm a fan of Gilster's books, and this one didn't disappoint. While the Network+ Passport does a great job of skimming over the basics, this book expanded on topics and covered everything necessary. Since I already had networking experience, I could have passed the test with this book alone. I also thought the test software included was pretty solid.

Product Description
* Master the material for the CompTIA Network+ exam
* Test your knowledge with assessment questions, scenario problems, and labs
* Practice on state-of-the-art test-preparation software
The only guide you need for Network+ exam success...
You're holding in your hands the most comprehensive and effective guide available for the CompTIA Network+ exam. A crack team of networking experts delivers incisive, crystal-clear explanations of every Network+ topic, highlighting exam-critical concepts and offering hands-on tips that can help you in your real-world networking career. Throughout, they provide pre-tests, exam-style assessment questions, scenario problems, and labs - everything you need to master the material and pass the exam. Inside, you'll find complete coverage of Network+ exam objectives
* Get the scoop on network topologies and technologies, media standards, and network components
* Master the ins and outs of MAC addresses, the OSI model, and common protocols such as TCP/IP, FTP, SMTP, and TFTP
* Get a handle on TCP/UDP port functionality and services such as DHCP, DNS, WINS, and SNMP
* Delve into IP addressing, public and private networks, WANs, remote access, and security protocols
* Find out how to implement VLANs, network-attached storage, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, firewalls, and proxy servers
* Get up to speed on network support, from client/server network configuration to troubleshooting wiring, networks, and remote connectivity
Test-Prep Software on CD-ROM
* Customizable test engine with hundreds of sample questions
* Searchable e-version of the book
* Observer demo version

From the Back Cover

• Master the material for the CompTIA Network+ exam
• Test your knowledge with assessment questions, scenario problems, and labs
• Practice on state-of-the-art test-preparation software

The only guide you need for Network+ exam success...

Youre holding in your hands the most comprehensive and effective guide available for the CompTIA Network+ exam. A crack team of networking experts delivers incisive, crystal-clear explanations of every Network+ topic, highlighting exam-critical concepts and offering hands-on tips that can help you in your real-world networking career. Throughout, they provide pre-tests, exam-style assessment questions, scenario problems, and labs - everything you need to master the material and pass the exam. Inside, youll find complete coverage of Network+ exam objectives

• Get the scoop on network topologies and technologies, media standards, and network components
• Master the ins and outs of MAC addresses, the OSI model, and common protocols such as TCP/IP, FTP, SMTP, and TFTP
• Get a handle on TCP/UDP port functionality and services such as DHCP, DNS, WINS, and SNMP
• Delve into IP addressing, public and private networks, WANs, remote access, and security protocols
• Find out how to implement VLANs, network-attached storage, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, firewalls, and proxy servers
• Get up to speed on network support, from client/server network configuration to troubleshooting wiring, networks, and remote connectivity

Test-Prep Software on CD-ROM

• Customizable test engine with hundreds of sample questions
• Searchable e-version of the book
• Observer demo version

Click Here to see more reviews about: Network+ Certification Bible (With CD-ROM) (Hardcover)