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Ask Slashdot: Good Technical Guide To Windows 10?
An anonymous reader writes: Back 'in the day' you could easily find books on NT, Windows 2000, or Slackware that went into painstaking detail about every functional aspect of the operating system (think Slackware Unleashed). They covered the interplay between BIOS, boot sector, crash dumps, every command-line option, etc. Past about Win 2000 I fell way behind focusing on finishing my EE degree. Now when faced with a complex issue, I just end up at Google, but would prefer a good comprehensive book on recent Win8/Win10 architectures. Any suggestions? Are these books all but limited to course-prep now?
The Windows Internal books are really good for that kind of detail
Paul Thurrott has published a Field Guide to Windows 10 that you can purchase through his site at https://www.thurrott.com/store. He has been writhing Windows guides for a long time and i find them to be very helpful. With the ever changing nature of OS delivery these days, it is hard to keep current and so I think most gudes have migrated to the Internet. Another source is to look for books written by Mark Russinovich, I believe he is a fellow at Microsoft, but his books and software are highly regarded as well.
Today it is far more convenient to get this info from the internet from multiple sources. So there isn't much of a market in all encompassing technical books.
TechNet: Windows 10, for example.
I majored in comp sci. I don't read these kinds of books.
I was working on the Google help desk in 2008 when I had to walk a recent computer science graduate through the process of turning on his PC. He was shocked — shocked! — that a cubicle farm wasn't like a computer lab and no one was standing around to turn on his computer. I'm always surprised by how many computer scientists don't know how to operate PC hardware. They probably don't read those kinds of books.
With the broad based yet in depth material you are looking for, you will need several books. I know how you feel though, finding well written and laid out 800 - 1000+ page books that were written for experts is not as simple as it used to be. After first reading your question I went and took a look at a bookshelf I have containing my oldest tech books from fifteen or more years ago. You really can't find stuff like that anymore. I actually left out some Windows 10 books in my list below because 80 out of 800 pages being useful isn't worth it, at least not to me. So as a long time and frequent tech book buyer, here is this best I can come up with:
The first would be: Windows 10 Inside Out http://www.amazon.com/Windows-.... It's about 900 pages of too simple for you through very complex concepts and procedures as they apply to that platform. It sounds like you would skip quite a bit, but there is enough in there to make it worth it.
Then of course there is the Windows 10: The Missing Manual http://www.amazon.com/Windows-... This is another example where you will likely skip over a lot of material but the good stuff is in fact pretty good.
Overwhelmingly above and beyond I want to recommend the Windows Internals series. However, I cannot find anything specific to Windows 10. As far as Windows 8 is concerned, this series is a stop here and buy this now kinda thing. If someone else can point in the right direction for Windows 10 coverage by this series, I myself would be grateful.
Once you've covered broad based expertise which likely won't take you long, you really need to start thinking along the lines of studying a few highly specific topics.
Oh, and then for either broad or focused based learning there is always the official MS Press series. I'm always a bit leery of that series though. I never purchase an MS Press book, especially recently released, unless I can find a substantial number of reviews across multiple sites for any one book. IMHO MS Press is the worst when it comes to publishing materials riddled with factually incorrect information, and reviews are the best way to get a heads up. Otherwise I think they make some of the greatest tech books. Sorry for not having a perfectly straight answer.
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