BKPNGPCU.RVW   990219

"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades", Peter Norton/Michael
Desmond, 1999, 0-672-31483-5, U$29.99/C$42.95/UK#26.95
%A   Peter Norton
%A   Michael Desmond www.michaeldesmond.com
%C   201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN   46290
%D   1999
%G   0-672-31483-5
%I   Macmillan Computer Publishing (MCP)
%O   U$29.99/C$42.95/UK#26.95 800-858-7674 http://www.mcp.com
%P   752 p.
%T   "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades, Second Edition"

Part one is an introduction, but it's really more of a once-over-
lightly than a set of background materials.  Successive chapters
provide a "what is a PC" (with a very heavy emphasis on PC99, bringing
to mind the MPC of yore), a look at Windows 9x (saying that it's
"secure"!), a rather tentative review of what you can upgrade, some
troubleshooting tips, and a wee bit of a buyer's guide.  Base
components are discussed in part two, looking at CPUs, memory, power,
and motherboards.  The material is not very detailed, with
recommendations seeming to be made by fiat.  Much the same is true of
the storage content, with drives, controllers, and tapes being loosely
covered in parts three and four.  In the same vein, part five's scan
of multimedia tells you that a lot of neat stuff is available, but
tends to be shy on detail, and not to warn you about potential
pitfalls down the road.  Part six's look at connectivity just seems to
presume it will all work, a dubious assumption at best when dealing
with communications.  The final section in part seven collects
leftover bits like printers, keyboards, cameras, and scanners.

Reading back through that, I have left the impression that there is no
content to this book at all.  At 750 pages, of course, that isn't
true.  However, while there is lots of discussion, it is truly
astonishing how little hard information is contained in the book.  And
every time I went looking for a point in regard to specific problems I
have had in recent years, it wasn't there.  The overall impression I
get from the book is of an oversized edition of "The Computer
Shopper," with relatively few products and even less price info.

On the first page of the first chapter, we are told that "no one
knew," in 1981, that the IBM PC would make a big splash.  While nobody
could have predicted the specifics and size of the current computer
market, everybody knew, as soon as IBM made the announcement, that the
PC was going to be big.  (There is also a fairly wide of the mark
misrepresentation of the deal with Microsoft for MS-DOS.)  There will,
of course, be those who object to my raising these points in this
review, since the book is a technical reference, and not a history. 
That observation is true.  However, the historical inaccuracies simply
serve as the first examples I saw of a rather cavalier attitude
towards research, substance, and definitude.  Since the text is
directed at those who do not have a serious background in computing,
and have to rely on its information, it is difficult to recommend a
work that starts off by getting it wrong.

In fact, I really don't think I can recommend this book at all.  Short
works like Myles White's "How to Avoid Buying a New Computer" (cf.
BKHTABNC.RVW) are thin on the ground, and a bit venerable, but this
book isn't that small anyway.  In view of the huge superiority of
Mueller and Zacker's "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" (cf. BKUPRPPC.RVW)
in only twice the pages, I cannot see an advantage for this book at
all.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999   BKPNGPCU.RVW   990219