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PC Annoyances
How often do you sit down for a relaxing session at your PC, only to discover you can't find that file you saved six months ago but forgot the name of it. Or to go into Word and realize several dreary tasks could mre easily be put into macros if only you knew how? Or you decide to browse the Web only to be "attacked" by pop-ups and extra windows? AAUGHH!
This book deals with the folk who use Windows and PC's. I realize there are those who loathe Windows ("Linux rools d00d!") and point to the chapter on Windows annoyances as an example of an OS gone terribly wrong. However, until the day comes that everyone uses Linux (or finds a way around Billy Boy's "evil empire"), we're stuck with it. But I digress.
The book's several chapters are divided into specific topics, like E-mail, Windows, the Internet, MS Office, Windows Explorer. Music, Video & CDs, and last but not least Hardware. And yes there's a few suggestions and software for dealing with spam. Spam spam, spam, spam, wonderful spammmmm...not! Also mentioned are items like turning off return receipt (who cares whether or not your sender received your message, it got sent didn't it?), embedded images in email, and so on. There are also sections on dealing specifically with flaws in Outlook Express, Eudora, AOL, and Hotmail.
One thing that bummed me a little personally was that the chapter on Windows annoyances for the most part are for Windows XP. In fact, the author strongly recommends, in fact almost implores you, gentle reader, to switch from Win 98 to XP. In spite of my system running slowly and sometimes crashing (and the fact that I'm rather broke these days), I'll stick with my 98 for now. Of course, one could point out if previous versions of Windows had been created "right" or "ran correctly," there wouldn't be need for a whole chapter (or even reams of books) on Microsoft fixes or how to get it to run properly.
The Internet chapter deals with getting rid of pop-ups while browsing, and introduces a nifty tool for checking dead links on your bookmarks. It's quite annoying to save a page on your favorite band or obscure sport and then discover three months later it's disappeared. Also mentioned are a few "tricks" with using Google and even AOL IMs, like making AOL IM an "ad-free" zone. In fact, several tricks in this book are centered on cutting down the amount of on-line advertising we all seem to be bombarded with.
MS Office ... ah yes, Office. What would we ever do without it? What can we do with it? Among other tips, the author describes ways of "outfoxing" Word's Auto Correct feature (but gee, Mr Word officer, I swear that's the way rutabaga is spelled!) and my personal favorite: getting rid of Clippy -- Yeah! Also mentioned are some nifty tricks for using Excel and Power Point.
Windows Explorer ... ah yes, Windows Explorer. Not bad, but it could be better. And the author points us to two alternatives to Explorer: Power Desk and Total Commander, two inexpensive utilities that do everything WE does and more. However, if you insist on staying loyal to WE, there are some nice tips here about dealing with it.
The last two chapters discuss ways of making it easier to listen to tunes on your PC, watching video streams, and recording audio from any source. But most importantly, the author advises that if you share CDs with others to use 74-minute CDs because not all CD ROMs are created equal. The 80-minute CDs may get cranky if they're put in an old CD ROM that won't read them.
Last but not least, the Hardware chapter touches upon such wondrous things as "The Wonders of a Modem Reset," "tuning up your monitor," and also a way to keep that color ink printing cartridge you just bought to last more than two weeks, just by switching your prints to the lowest quality for most of your work. When you're broke like myself, those $50 printer cartridges add up fast!
I've just touched upon a few tips here ... the book has many more, all designed to be very helpful to the PC user.
The back inside cover has a place where the CD with all these nifty utilities should be, except O'Reilly decided to save a few bucks on the book's cost by pointing to a URL and telling we gentle readers to go there to get the utilities. Alas, I'm lazy and impatient (not to mention being too damn cheap to get a DSL line) so I haven't gotten around to getting most of the utilities yet. My bad. I've gotten used over the years to books that had the CD that I could just slide into my drive and install away. I have however so far gotten SpyBot, AMDeadLink, and MailWasher. Great stuff, and I do plan to download at least a few more of these utilities. Of course, the web site where you download all this stuff is a great plug for PC World.
The "enlightened ones," as I mention, won't need to bother with this book, as they have Linux, or a Mac. But the rest of us, who do battle with our PCs daily, will get a lot of useful information out of this book.
You can purchase PC Annoyances from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Grammar Nazi alert. This should be "telling us gentle readers". Think about how the sentence would sound if you ended on the pronoun:
They did it without telling us.
They did it withoug telling we.
No, becuase his answer was 10 times better than yours, just like OS X is 10 times the operating system DebianGNU/Linux is. Not a troll, it's the stone truth. If all of you free op systems guys would unite behind Apple and OS X on the desktop and put all your efforts into making *nix the absolute server OS of all time THEN you would make Microsoft sweat bullets. OS X on the desktop and a unified ( yeah I know, thats a running joke ) Linux Server that kicks anything from MS in the ass - imagine that. oh yeah, thats right - Apple's hardware is too pricey too slow the gay computer etc etc etc...even though OS X is the holy grail, you cant accept it becuase it's not free. What you seek is right in front of your nose, but you wont take it becuase you're too proud. If half of you guys would buy a G5 or iBook you would do a lot more to hurt MS and dilute it's power than yet another linus distro. How about Apple with a 30% market share? Think that would'nt grab ole Billy Boy's attention? Yeah, mod this a troll. I dont care. It's real.
Mac OS isn't just expensive, it's seems ultra expensive. $130 (in eurpoe even more) everytime a minor upgrade comes out is for a Linux guy expensive. I rather buy a new disk for that.
Also, software libre is important for some of us. I say no to core libraries not being open source. Which rules out much of the OS X experience. The programs I write and the programs I run should be able to run easily on whatever platfrom my users or I choose for the moment. With OS X this is not true if you choose the Aqua gui.
I work for and own companies. While the IT department is dealing with hundreds of requests from Windows users to help them deal with removing spyware, crashing, installing restricively licensed and overpriced software, etc.. me and my co-workers are busy being productive on Linux machines. We can interoperate with Microsoft products without a problem using samba, open office and other nice software, control other users PC's or test windows applications using rdesktop, run lots of games and multimedia apps, all on fast, cheap linux boxes. At my companies, everybody runs OS X or Linux, depending on their jobs. In fact, the least productive part of my day is when I have to fire up rdesktop and log into a windows machine to test some code to make sure it behaves nicely on Windows. We have one sales guy running XP on his laptop, but the admins are installing Linux on there next week because he can't get XP to stop crashing. I'm sorry you think you have to be told what to 'do' to make 'money'. Thats a really unfortunate place to be.
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You know what would qualify as an annoyance for a Windows user? The login screen.
The world is changing... it's just you stick in the muds who're not...
nah... it just spontaneously reboots instead...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I agree with you here, there is no suitable replacement for Autocad (that I can think of) for Linux. When I was doing 3D modelling a lot more, I NT.
I wish I could recommend something besides the M-audio interface. It is very pretty and probably works better than their other stuff used too. I've had a few cheap M-audio interfaces. Hated them all, mostly due to random driver errors and crashing. Like I said, I don't know of anything better in that price range, although the Digi002 (more expensive, apps must support Direct I/O or be pro-tools) and the Emagic A26 USB interface (less expensive, less features, not firewire) are both very good for the job. And I did leave out games, although I play a few on linux when I have time (I don't).
And anyway, since when did trolling require thinking? Generally the more thoughtless a comment is, the more responses it will get. As long as someone feels belittled, cheated, threatened, opposed, etc..
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You linux types really dont give windows enough credit...if software would have remained free the way you like it, no one would have had to money to create an operating system easy enough for the masses to use. eg there would have been no boom in personal computing, hardware manufactures would have had no reason to devolpe new technologies at the rate they do today, it would still cost me 500 beucks for a megabyte of ram, i would have nothing near the quality of applications i had today...the cascade effect goes on and what is your arguement anyway! install linux and i wount have to format my hard drive a few times a year hah i could easily do that in the time i would save not having to attempt to install a linux app or find one that suits my needs for that matter. dont get me wrong linux does have its place...it works great as a file server or a web server or a database where extreme reliabality is an issue. But misrosoft isnt going anywhere so get used to it.
Microsoft is a dishonest company that pays people to lie on their behalf. When you say XP is stable and not buggy, you are either decieved or paid to say that. When you are dishonest, you bring down even your honest advocates, tough luck. When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. When you tie your system down with Microsoft, you get popups and all manner of buggy anoyances. My little brother keeps one of those nasty little boxes. He's good, but it sucks time and life. Good for you if you managed to weather the Slammer storm and all the other nasties that have jammed the web for the last 2 years thanks to XP.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.