Any suggestions for Win7 books?

[Allen]

Has anyone found a decent aftermarket book on Win7? I'm running Home
Premium 32. I hope to avoid the usual overpriced books from MS, as in
the past their books seem to forget problem areas.
Allen

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Allen.

What level book do you need? Win7 for Dummies? Or the Windows 7 Resource
Kit? Or something in between.

I bought Windows 7 Inside Out from Amazon last month - after finally
finishing Windows Vista Inside Out. :^} List price is $49.99 but Amazon
has it for $29.24 - with free shipping if you act fast - or if you wait a
day or two for the next near-perpetual free shipping offer.

http://www.amazon.com/Windows®-Insi...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258065688&sr=1-1

I've always found Microsoft's Resource Kits worth the money, even though
they are expensive and half of each book is aimed a organizations much
bigger than my one-man one-computer office in my home. List price for the
Win7 RK is $69.99, but Amazon has it for $40.94 - with free shipping...see
above.

Most aftermarket books are too shallow and don't tell me much more than the
Windows Help and Support file. But the RKs have given details, such as
contents of the disk systems (MBR, boot sectors, etc.) and the setup and
startup processes. I could skip over the half about "deployment" and such
and still get enough out of the book to justify the price AND the time and
effort to study it. I always figured that the hours I invested in learning
from those references would pay me dividends, not just for now but for as
long as I keep using computer - and that just might be for the rest of my
life. I still use every day much of what I learned about hard disks and
file systems from the original Norton Utilities and Win98 Resource Kit. But
it seems that each RK is less detailed than the one before. I haven't seen
the Win7 version yet.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[Allen]

Hi, Allen.

What level book do you need? Win7 for Dummies? Or the Windows 7
Resource Kit? Or something in between.

I bought Windows 7 Inside Out from Amazon last month - after finally
finishing Windows Vista Inside Out. :^} List price is $49.99 but
Amazon has it for $29.24 - with free shipping if you act fast - or if
you wait a day or two for the next near-perpetual free shipping offer.

http://www.amazon.com/Windows®-Insi...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258065688&sr=1-1


I've always found Microsoft's Resource Kits worth the money, even though
they are expensive and half of each book is aimed a organizations much
bigger than my one-man one-computer office in my home. List price for
the Win7 RK is $69.99, but Amazon has it for $40.94 - with free
shipping...see above.

Most aftermarket books are too shallow and don't tell me much more than
the Windows Help and Support file. But the RKs have given details, such
as contents of the disk systems (MBR, boot sectors, etc.) and the setup
and startup processes. I could skip over the half about "deployment"
and such and still get enough out of the book to justify the price AND
the time and effort to study it. I always figured that the hours I
invested in learning from those references would pay me dividends, not
just for now but for as long as I keep using computer - and that just
might be for the rest of my life. I still use every day much of what I
learned about hard disks and file systems from the original Norton
Utilities and Win98 Resource Kit. But it seems that each RK is less
detailed than the one before. I haven't seen the Win7 version yet.

RC

Thanks from 28 miles north of you, RC. I've been retired for 16 years,
and my computer is strictly for home use for my wife and me. I
"celebrated" my 55th year of dealing with computers 55 years ago last
month, with a 1500-tube analog machine (in the Army) and in 1961 I
started dealing with an IBM 1401, then 360, etc. all kinds of minis and
PCs, and I've known more languages than I can count. But I very much
like to have a nice, accurate hard copy for emergencies. I think I'll
order that RK.
Allen

 

[R. C. White]

Howdy, Neighbor!

Continued below...

Thanks from 28 miles north of you, RC. I've been retired for 16 years, and
my computer is strictly for home use for my wife and me. I "celebrated" my
55th year of dealing with computers 55 years ago last month, with a
1500-tube analog machine (in the Army) and in 1961 I started dealing with
an IBM 1401, then 360, etc. all kinds of minis and PCs, and I've known
more languages than I can count. But I very much like to have a nice,
accurate hard copy for emergencies. I think I'll order that RK.
Allen

I'm retired, too, after 30 Tax Seasons in California and my native Oklahoma.
We moved here in 1990, expecting me to work as a consultant or trust officer
or professor, but that was in the middle of the S&L crisis and none of my
options worked out, so I just decided I was retired. ;^}

At OU (Class of '56), we had "IBM machines" with 80-column punch cards. As
an internal auditing officer in the Air Force, I had a few slight brushes
with computers, but nothing near hands-on. To answer some of our CPA firm's
clients' questions about using computers in their businesses, we had to
learn a little about them. In the Summer of 1977, my printing client
wondered if a computer could help with his estimating and job costing. The
IBM salesman loaned me a small desktop, to which he had bolted a handle to
make it luggable. It had BASIC and RPG, 8 KB RAM, about a 7" CRT and a data
cassette drive. By the time he took it back, I was hooked - even though it
cost $15,000 with no printer! A couple of months later I flew from San
Bernardino to San Francisco to see the original Commodore PET, discovered
the SOL and other "microcomputers" at the big show in Union Square - and
I've been a computer nut ever since.

I bought the first TRS-80 I ever saw in December 1977. By January, I had
learned its Tiny BASIC and programmed a 12 KB program to estimate income
taxes for our clients; my partners still used the updated version of that
when I left California in 1980.

I had to learn a lot more about computers than I intended because nobody in
town knew anything about them. Books were scarce and those that were
available - even Adam Osborne's Volume 0 (that's zero!) - were way over my
head. But with the help of SuperZap and the early Norton Utilities -
especially DiskEdit - I learned things about bits and sectors and FAT that I
still use today. Details have changed, but the underlying structures of
both hardware and software still resemble what I learned over the past 30
years.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[Anthony Buckland]

I'm retired too, although not from the vacuum tube age.
Definitely, though, from the card deck age, my chief
heritage from which is a supply of excellently sized
shopping lists which will probably outlive me.

I found Windows XP Inside Out an invaluable resource,
without which I would have had a hell of a time extricating
myself from at least two crises which would have cost a
bunch of money if I'd had to give up and get professional
help (no fair making any comments about my more
general need for professional help). If the W7 Inside Out
is as well done and inclusive, I'll definitely need a copy
once I move to W7 (not quite yet).

 

[Allen]

I'm retired too, although not from the vacuum tube age.
Definitely, though, from the card deck age, my chief
heritage from which is a supply of excellently sized
shopping lists which will probably outlive me.

Ah, punchcards! I was a banker and our first computer was an IBM 1401,
all card, no disc, no tape. We processed not only our own work but
another bank and several commercial customers. We used 1.5 million cards
per month, and had a maintenance person whose almost-full-time job was
moving cards in and out of the computer room, Every inch of wall space
had either a door or a card file, and none of us had to wait until 2000
to find out what chad is. Hail Hollerith!
Allen

<snip>

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ah, punchcards! I was a banker and our first computer was an IBM 1401,

You're bringing back my memories. I too am retired, I started as a
programmer in 1962, and my first computer was also a 1401, with 4K
(4,000 characters, not 4096) of memory.

all card, no disc, no tape.

We started with all punched cards, but quickly went to a tape system
(four tape drives, I think, but I can't remember the number for sure)
with 8K and then 12K of memory.

Back in those days, I knew almost everything there was to know about
the computer I worked with. Today, I know a fair amount, but it's not
possible to come even close to knowing everything.

And by the way, one month's rent on that 4K punched-card 1401 was
considerably more than the purchase price of a much higher speed, much
more capable Windows PC today.

 

[Allen]

You're bringing back my memories. I too am retired, I started as a
programmer in 1962, and my first computer was also a 1401, with 4K
(4,000 characters, not 4096) of memory.




We started with all punched cards, but quickly went to a tape system
(four tape drives, I think, but I can't remember the number for sure)
with 8K and then 12K of memory.

Back in those days, I knew almost everything there was to know about
the computer I worked with. Today, I know a fair amount, but it's not
possible to come even close to knowing everything.

And by the way, one month's rent on that 4K punched-card 1401 was
considerably more than the purchase price of a much higher speed, much
more capable Windows PC today.

When we upgraded to a 360 with _three_ 7.5 megabytes each, we were, as
they say, in hog heaven. We soon realized that the 16 K in the 360
wasn't enough, we added an additional 16 K in a box about the size of
two refrigerators, at a cost of $48,000. Try to buy 16 K and get laughed
at. My 3 gig in my PC now would have cost roughly $10,000,000,000 plus
the cost of a new large building to house it. And slow.
Allen

 

[Metspitzer]

Hi, Allen.

What level book do you need? Win7 for Dummies? Or the Windows 7 Resource
Kit? Or something in between.

I bought Windows 7 Inside Out from Amazon last month - after finally
finishing Windows Vista Inside Out. :^} List price is $49.99 but Amazon
has it for $29.24 - with free shipping if you act fast - or if you wait a
day or two for the next near-perpetual free shipping offer.

http://www.amazon.com/Windows®-Insi...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258065688&sr=1-1

I've always found Microsoft's Resource Kits worth the money, even though
they are expensive and half of each book is aimed a organizations much
bigger than my one-man one-computer office in my home. List price for the
Win7 RK is $69.99, but Amazon has it for $40.94 - with free shipping...see
above.

Most aftermarket books are too shallow and don't tell me much more than the
Windows Help and Support file. But the RKs have given details, such as
contents of the disk systems (MBR, boot sectors, etc.) and the setup and
startup processes. I could skip over the half about "deployment" and such
and still get enough out of the book to justify the price AND the time and
effort to study it. I always figured that the hours I invested in learning
from those references would pay me dividends, not just for now but for as
long as I keep using computer - and that just might be for the rest of my
life. I still use every day much of what I learned about hard disks and
file systems from the original Norton Utilities and Win98 Resource Kit. But
it seems that each RK is less detailed than the one before. I haven't seen
the Win7 version yet.

RC

http://binsearch.info/?q=Resource+Kit&max=250&adv_age=99&server=