PC Hardware in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))
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Amazon.co.uk Review
PC Hardware in a Nutshell relies on an eternal truth of the computer industry: legacy systems never die. This book focuses on the technologies that have provided Wintel personal computers with various capabilities over the years. Like most of its competitors, this book addresses the PC on a subsystem level, dealing with video cards, hard-disk interfaces, memory and other pieces of the componentry puzzle that hardware integrators need to figure out. The authors do a great job of explaining the differences between (and relative merits of) IDE and SCSI hard-drive interfaces, various video buses, competing processors and other technologies. They also prove themselves adept at explaining general assembly procedures and troubleshooting strategies.
This book distinguishes itself from its most popular competitors by emphasising the authors' opinions on hardware products. It's refreshing to see authors recommend Product A for high-performance systems in which price is not an issue, Product B for economical home systems, and Product C for organisational workstations. On the other hand, the recommendations, prices and similar values will change over time. The authors maintain a great Web site where you can find their current recommendations. (The Web site, on the other hand, doesn't include the book's high-quality tutorial on designing and assembling a system from zero.) Even the photographs that appear in this book--traditionally a weak point among hardware books--are clear. --David Wall
North Bay Multimedia Association Newsletter, August 2002
You can use this as an informative encyclopedia as well as a practical user guide .It's all here!
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
O'reilly books enjoy a certain notoriety within the PC/Internet community, however thier most successful publications are based upon generic protocols... not hardware. That said, despite the 'light' approach which has been adopted for certain aspects, "PC Hardware in a Nutshell" is well written, with well-ordered chapters giving discussion to memory, motherboards, hard disks and even power supplies(?). I particularly liked the penultimate chapters, which are dedicated to designing and building your own system. These are an excellent reference for those with a penchant for PC-DIY and are well illustrated. The main detractor from these sections is that only windows based systems are cited as examples.
One nice approach, which is echoed throughout the book, are the comments given regarding upgrading older kit, and whether the upgrade/s were worthwhile. A feature, which for me, makes "PC Hardware in a Nutshell" a great resource for those on a budget.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A new edition of this has just been released so the comments about it being out of date are not relevant (August 2003).
However, after thinking that this book had everything I suffered a creeping feeling that there were omissions, and that was confirmed after I started to use the book. It has everything about PCs in it - what it doesn't have is coverage of hardware specific to laptops or intel servers.
No networking stuff, no Xeon processors, no PCMCIA, no High-end tape drives.
However, if you tinker with or fix desktop PC systems (Windows or Linux) this is perhaps the best reference there is.
Format:Paperback
While dated the book is still a good read. I particularly liked the bit about cleaning keyboard by putting them in the dishwasher then drying them in the oven.
I was suprised to find it had nothing on networking, be it lan or internet. Ethernet is not even mentioned in the index.
I was suprised to find it had nothing on networking, be it lan or internet. Ethernet is not even mentioned in the index.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Warning
Note that the reviews below are for previous editions. The one here is newly released (less than a month old as I write this). Read more
Published on 2 Sep 2003
Super
excellant book for the novice and the intermediate.
Good info and easy to follow. good for reference for future projects too. Read more
Published on 17 May 2003
OK I guess
if you are a total genious for pcs and hardware, chances are you will not need this book.
If you are trying to learn about pcs and know absolutely nothing abouut them, search... Read more
If you are trying to learn about pcs and know absolutely nothing abouut them, search... Read more
Published on 23 Nov 2001 by Robbo
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