30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very handy if you're new to XP, 18 April 2003
Great book if you know a little about Windows but want more detail than that offered in the 'Dummies' series. Takes you into and behind many of the key features common to Windows (registry, the start menu, right click context menus, speeding up startup and shutdown, backups, to name a few) and shows you not to be afraid, that it's not all that complicated and that you can really improve the how you use XP with loads of little tweaks.
I especially liked how it went into detail over many individual quirks, walking you through the changes required in a straightforward list-style manner. It also points out many shortcomings and, helpfully, lists measures necessary to work around them. Just off the top of my head, some really handy tips are listed with Explorer, backing bits of the registry before making changes, closing holes in XP security. The book is just packed with ways that you can adapt and adjust XP.
If you're at all a bit of a control freak who wants to know what all the 'secret rules' are for Windows XP and where they are hidden, then this book is probably for you.
Watch out for all the typos in the first edition though.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent hackers' guide to Windows XP, 16 Jun 2003
Windows XP is the best version of Windows but it isn't perfect. This is a guide to monkeying around with the system to make it work how you want it to and ranges from minor tinkering to major hacking. At the same time, it's a rather good user guide, at least from the perspective of the computer savvy user, covering such areas as the registry, performance, networking (the coverage of this is particularly good) and scripting. There are lots of nice touches as well - for example, the lists of BIOS settings and blue-screen-of-death error messages. This book goes very well with 'Windows XP in a Nutshell'.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Windows XP Annoyances, 23 Sep 2003
This is an excellent book, covers a lot of useful information. You will not probably follow all of the examples in the book but you will certainly pick out the ones suited to your preferences. It is very detailed about the examples and how they work.
The only thing that lets this book down is that there are quite a few spelling mistakes.
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