I love this book! It helped me overcome several things that have been
bugging the hell out of me about Windows XP. Just browsing Appendix A,
the list of settings and where to find them has led to some pretty deep
revelations.
My biggest XP Annoyances?
The book addressed all of them. It thoughtfully explains why things are
as they are in Windows and how they could be better. My copy is
weatherbeaten and underlined and highlighted because I was reading it
like a novel, on the bus, at lunch, in bed.
One of the nice passages was the discussion about NTFS and the other
windows file systems and what each of them can and can't do. Also the
security information helped me take some further steps in securing my
home computer. The performance section is indespensable if you installed XP on any computer with less than oh, say 512 MB of RAM.
The section on the registry was worth the price of the book, in my
opinion. It taught me how to find the registry key that governs the
setting I am looking for, how to add registry interfaces to my
applications, and how to create, apply and edit registry patches, all of
which have added to my productivity.
In the file encryption discussion, he warns that some applications, when
editing files, open the file, erase the original and and replace it with
a copy. I don't doubt that it is true, but gee, I would like to know
some of the programs that do this because it sounds kind of crazy.... The encryption (and who knows what else) is lost. There is a workaround that the book explains.
The book missed a couple of things: For one, Windows XP that can act as a webDAV client. WebDAV is not the most intuitive thing in the world and I think a short section on it would have been useful to a lot of people. I saw no mention of WebDAV in the book.
Like most information in the book, the part about how Microsoft's
firewall is "feeble" is very informative, but the list of third party
firewalls he lists as alternatives leaves out the best one: Zone Alarm. He should have listed it or explained why he didn't.
The only other complaint about the book I have is that while he offers a
lot of great security tips and settings, he could have taken the
security section a little further. For instance, he shows how to
run netstat from the command line and get a listing of all your open
ports. Then he says, "patch them up" without really telling you a good
way to do this. If I closed all those ports, half
of my applications would stop working. He should have detailed the work
needed to track down each of those ports.
In sum, this book has several things you shouldn't ignore and lots of
things that make operating Windows XP much more pleasant. Also,
following the remedies will make you more adventurous and confident as
you learn Windows XP.
Review by Tim McGuire
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