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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.
Try Linux!
VeryGeekyBooks has more reviews of this book.
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.
Opening up the can of worms I see.
Pardon me while I put on the 'ol asbestos suit and run for my life.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
However, until the day comes that everyone uses Linux (or finds a way around Billy Boy's "evil empire"),
:-)
Its here and its called OS X
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
> I've managed to glean several valuable tips about Windows 95 and 98
> from the Annoyances books about those OSes
Windows? Annoyances? Isn't that redundant?
Or if they're really unlucky, they get the support the Win32 users.
[Or if they're really unlucky, they lose their job right before the holidays and don't even do that any longer. But I digress.]
To be fair, it's not like non-MS software is annoyance-free. =) One nice difference with Linux, Evolution, and all of the other OS software I use is that I can learn about the annoyances before I pony up my increasingly scarce cash for it....
One of my favorite dialogs from Windows is the one saying "This program is not responding". Excuse me but wouldn't it be nice to tell me which one that is? Obviously Windows knows which one it is. Arrrr!
TT
be prepared for annoyances like:
- not being able to open that complex word attachment that your coworker mailed you
- not being able to browse every site online (some are definitely IE specific, others require plugins not available on linux)
- figure out how users, accounts, software installations etc. work (click on a link and the program installs automatically? yeah, right), not to mention the joys of the command line
- become confused by some desktop environments where settings are spread around 3 different menus and where sometimes they inexplicably don't stick etc. etc. in general using software developed by developers with sometimes not much thought given to user friendliness and good UI guidelines.
- not being able to play commercial games (unless you shell out for winex and even then some things don't work)
I could go on and on, I've been using linux on my desktop primarily for more than 10 years now and there's no way that I'd give it to somebody not extremely computer literate...
-- the cake is a lie
The only thing that keeps people stuck on Windows is their attitudes. I have not had the displeasure of using a Windows machine in over a year. Everyone that uses OS X or Linux regularly knows that Windows provides no significant benefits, is overpriced and wrought with drawbacks. Anyone that wishes to drop Windows is free to do so at any time. The resigned attitude that you are stuck with anything is rediculous. You are scared. Be honest, say "I am scared of other operating systems".
TallGreen CMS hosting
My biggest PC annoyance is my father. Am I the only one who has a father (or some other relation), that knows nothing about computers, yet insists upon playing with all the settings they can find?
Oy.
Should Slashdot be covering books that are considered "novice books" for windows. I thought the concept here is to discuss a little deeper issues. I can get this same review from "Better Homes and Gardens"
Stay tuned for new sig...
But they said it only comes in a set of 32 hardbound volumes.
Is watching someone else use a computer!
Example comments:
You know, you don't have to double-click the webpage link...
You could just type the web address in the white box at the top instead of using a search engine...
Damn it! No! Just... Forget it, let me do it.
All last night. There were a few more I'm sure.
This is not my sig.
It's all from this whole website dedicated to making the lives of the windows users much easier. I like the animation of clippy getting stomped.
Hey, that makes ME classify it as a book for geeks..... .....to give to family members who are relatively computer illiterate, to reduce the number of "come fix my computer!" phone calls.
Doesn't sound useless to me!
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
*Installing new apps from the command line
.DLL hell but certainly library hell
*Missing packages and circular dependencies - a wont install without b, b wont install without c, c wont install without a.
*Maybe no
*Plug and play works ok during the initial setup but not very well after that. Try changing your video card after already doing the initial install.
*Cut and paste doesnt work most of the time.
*Crappy fonts - most web pages look like crap, even slashdot. I dont consider stealing fonts from windows a fix to this problem.
*X and Gnome and Kde are just as bloated as XP.
*Everything is a beta. Wheres all the version 1.0+ software?
"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. "
oh yeah its ANNOYING when i stupidly name files! here i was thinking it was my fault and not the inatimate object that just takes what i give it... duh!
dont get me started on how i can never remember my aol password! why doesnt the computer remember it for me? surely this would save people MILLIONS of hours of time!
come on. i mean, come on.
"They that can give up essential control of the PC to obtain a little temporary comfortability deserve neither control nor comfortability." -- Benjamin Franklin v.2.0
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
About as often has I have a heart-to-heart discussion with my cordless drill. Maybe slightly less frequently than I take my telephone on a nice vacation to the beach?
A computer is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. I've got no emotional attachment to it whatsoever.
Father-in-Law. I live in Texas, he lives in Pennsyvlania. One glorious Saturday afternoon, we reformatted his hard drive and reinstalled Windows. Over the phone.
Did I mention that he's practically deaf?
"FORMAT C:/ \s"
"E?"
"No, C"
"G?"
ceci n'est pas un sig.
about windows are the themed 'schemes' that people can load.
i am doing an install at a clients PC today, and I absolutely hate wagging around the "reigndeer" pointer that goes with the X-mas scheme. This feature should be disable on "windows professional", and be relegated to home users.
Gag - this is worse than Clippy.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Do you really need to buy a book to figure out how to uncheck the "Office Assistants" checkbox in the list of available modules during the install of Office?
be prepared for benefits like:
.ini files to something downright usable.
- being able to enjoy those cute "I love you" and "Anna Kurovina" messages automatically forwarded from your best friends, co-workers, and total strangers.
- The ability to browse every site online, at least every one selling X10 cameras and pictures you wouldn't want your boss to see.
- Software so advanced it installs automatically while you browse, no user intervention required. Uninstalling is as simple as wiping your main partition and re-installing Windows.
- Enjoy desktop environments where settings are spread around 3 different menus and where sometimes they inexplicably don't stick etc. etc. in general using software developed by investors free from the limiting boundaries of friendliness and caring about your users.
- A wide swath of available content, all provided to your trusted platform ensuring that your purchased programs will run forever... Until you lose the disk, upgrade your system, ban the program from spying on your browsing habits, or the producer decides to turn the software off remotely.
Linux is no longer hard. Once you have a modern Debian, Red Hat, or Mandrake installed, everything runs easy-peasy. I've been using it on and off for 6 years, and in that time frame it's gone from nothing but command line editing of
We have a woman in the office who had never used a computer before in her life. We plunked her down in front of a Windows box and a Linux box. While Covad required Internet Explorer, she was always using Linux. She likes the multiple desktops (Microsoft has a power tool multidesktop, BTW), changes her wallpaper every few days, and prefers browsing around in Konqueror. To her, editing the registry is as baffling as editing a shell script, but she doesn't need to do that anyway. If she wants something installed on Debian, it is an apt-get away (whereas in windows she has to look for it). I'd feel comfortable putting newbies in front of a Linux install. In fact, I've done it, many times, and with success.
I respect the opinions of my Linux elders, but I fear your perceptions of the OS may be a little out of date.
The ______ Agenda
I used to throw bricks at my monitor until I realized that my monitor had done nothing wrong.
Finally I had to break down and buy a magnesium alloy case becuse computers are su much more expensive than tubes.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I don't think I need a book to tell me about the annoyances of Windows 98...
ascii art
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.
I've been running XP for almost 6 months and it has *never* crashed.
Switch you fool! (Oh, and inquire your fellow nerds for a, um, *cough*, discount)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I'm surprised that this book got an "8" for offering such profoundly useful advice such as how to eliminate popups or to use less ink in your printer by using economy mode. Did any of the advice mentioned in the review even remotely pique your interest (assuming you have to deal with Windows at all)? When auto-correct annoyed me (which it also did in OpenOffice), I looked through the options and turned it off. If that's too hard to figure out without a book, then you need some basic software education instead of a grab-bag of "tricks".
I wonder what versions of Windows the book refers to? I thought PowerDesk only worked for Windows 95-ME. And what software is it really addressing? If it's giving any advice about Internet Explorer, I hope that it's to remove all file associations and hide all links to it by deleting them or burying them deeply in Start Menu/Programs/Accessories/Unsupported Software/Mistakes/Don't Go Here/Did You Try Mozilla?/FireBird?/Opera?/You Can't Be Serious!/Are You Really Really Sure?/Okay But Don't Blame OReilly/.
Besides being a poor review; as in no real insight into the book.... The reviewer doesn't seem to be a reliable source. I don't put much faith into someone who is unwilling to upgrade to XP when they are having terrible problems with 98. It wouldn't have surprised me if he was running ME. ;-) I get tired of people complaining about a six year old operating systems.
If he doesn't want to pay for Windows, he could easily use SUSE, Fedora, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, etc...
My dad, who's in his late 70s, bought a PC last year (because it was cheap & he is parsimonious). This replaced an antique Mac Classic, which still runs BTW. After many phone calls for advice about Win XP, I showed him the Annoyances web site. He looked at me & looked relieved. "So other people are just as annoyed with this stuff as I am, huh?" And he's had fun implementing the various fixes, although he's still too stingy to go buy the book. Maybe I'll get him the book for Christmas... I've already left him a Knoppix CD to play with, though ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Let's go back in time a bit.
.Net framework for FreeBSD being one. But there they were trying to build an even bigger replacement monopoly, so it made some sense).
A while ago, Microsoft released IE for Solaris. Sparc solaris. Not x86 Solaris. It wouldn't have cost them anything but typing 'make' on a Solaris x86 box, but they would not do it.
If Microsoft were to release software for non-Microsoft x86 operating systems, then they'd be helping to validate the proposition that Microsoft is not the only game in town. They simply cannot afford to do that (there are a couple cases where they have done so - the
If Microsoft releases Linux office on Monday, Dell will start selling Linux desktops on Tuesday.
Maybe if Microsoft actually loses its monopoly status in operating systems, we might start to see them port their software, but they're working very, very hard (and playing very, very dirty) to make sure that won't happen. Ever.
And every product of theirs anyone uses (note I didn't say "purchases" - even users who pirate their shite help keep them in control) helps make it possible.
They should make that a default configuration option, the '-mother' switch. :)
"Click here if your mother sends you e-mail." hehe
What... right like Linux? Which version of the kernel? Or did you mean a specific distro? Which one?
Or are you talking about having the computer configured the correctly out of the box? Configured to whose preferences? Which hardware?
Remember the "P" in PC stands for "Personal". The whole idea is that you can whack it into submission, unlike servers run by us uptight, high-strung operators.
Go configure.
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
The original book was a compilation - kind of a blog. People submitted content to the site.
One scary piece was that, every now and then, Windows would delete a folder containing an MS competitor's product. Not a problem - since essentially all Windows users back up their systems on a regular basis...
Note that Windows XP is too large and slow to run on many machines that run Windoze 98. And, '98 is still a virus/worm nightmare. For these smaller and slower machines, the options are - get a firewall, antivirus, etc., or, load it with Linux.
I still prefer Win 2000 pro over XP, in a lesser of evils sort of way.
-- Stephen.
Backspace key in Internet Explorer goes back a page, and promptly trashes the contents of whatever form you were filling out before you clicked in the wrong place.
Now WHOSE bright idea was that?
it's a rant against Microsoft. I'd suggest criticizing the book from the context in which it was written.
By far the most annoying and ridiculous thing in Windows (and it's STILL in W2k and AFAIK XP) is when you do a large file operation, like moving or deleting a large group of files, it gives you an error because one of the files is locked or something and when you hit OK it stops.
I still want all the other files that aren't locked to move. What idiot thought that up?
O'Reilly has a book about Linux annoyances as well. However, they named it Linux Server Hacks
Can you spell your name and remember a password? If so you can install Knoppmyth, a fully installable Knoppix(debian) distro with mythtv. Knoppmyth is a pvr, has tv with a guide to your local cable/sat provider, weather, news, a dvd playing, an mp3 player (and indexing, by group and album, with visualizations), cd ripper with artist and title lookup, emulator frontend, and vcd player.
-dameron
Not to complain (a phrase that is always followed by a complaint), but... this has to be one of the worse book reviews I've read in a while (even on Slashdot). Many of the comments were unnecessary, and it seemed to really just be an excuse to bash Microsoft. I'm not sure the Slashdot audience is the best audience to pitch this book to, either, though I'm sure many will find it quite useful.
... ah yes, Office. What would we ever do without it? What can we do with it? ... ah yes, Windows Explorer. Not bad, but it could be better.
/. only posted it in hopes of getting people to use the affiliate link...
I just had to comment about the review itself. The reviewer gives a couple of specific examples from the book. And his own comments, like:
MS Office
Windows Explorer
And sentances like:
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.
(emphasis mine)
There's not much of a teaser or compelling "cliff hanger" to make one want to go buy this book. I suspect
About the book itself, aside from the one chapter about hardware issues, it seems to be yet another Windows (and Windows software) annoyances book, though if you're targetting the mainstream I suppose PC == Windows. It just doesn't sound much like an O'Reilly title, though...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows