Book details of 'Windows XP Annoyances'

Title	Windows XP Annoyances
Author(s)	David A. Karp
ISBN	0596004168
Language	English
Published	October 2002
Publisher	O'Reilly & Associates

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
Microsoft Windows XP may be the latest in a popular family of operating systems, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. However, the designers of Windows XP have built enough flexibility into their product and provided users with a sufficiently large toolkit to overcome most shortcomings. In Windows XP Annoyances David Karp reveals his ideas about how to use Windows XP most effectively, for maximum fun and productivity and as little aggravation as possible. If you're comfortable working with Windows XP (or any of its recent predecessors) but find certain aspects of it, well, annoying, you'll find this book to your liking. Karp guides his readers through potentially risky procedures, such as editing the Registry and adjusting hardware device drivers, with skill and precision.The author's tone is to the point and professional without being dry, without any of the phony, forced humor that appears in a lot of operating-system books. Though he inexplicably ignores the Windows XP Power Toys--some very handy utilities you can get from Microsoft's Web site--he does a great job of handling important questions. Case in point, the important issue of which files can be deleted to free up disk space, and which you shouldn't touch even though they look like pointless garbage. Similarly useful attention goes to the question of which background processes can be safely halted, and which are important. There's fine coverage of scripting with the Windows Script Host (WSH), as well. --David Wall Topics covered: How to get the most out of Windows XP, even when it appears that the operating system is working against you. Troubleshooting techniques, hardware advice, Registry hacking, interface customization, and advanced networking subjects all find a place in this book.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Chapter one is a history of XP and other versions of Windows. All manner of useful (and some less useful) interface tricks are included in chapter two, most involving Windows Explorer and the command prompt. The Registry is described in chapter three. The material is not detailed in regard to specific keys, but the concepts and information are clear, and there are tips that are not always found in books specifically about the Registry. Chapter four, on tinkering techniques, sometimes mentions shareware programs (often TweakUI), but concentrates on available system utilities and commands. The content is useful, but could have included something on "Send To" and the material on the command line that appears in Appendix C. "Maximizing performance" is limited to good, but standard, hardware advice, in chapter five. The troubleshooting text, in chapter six, definitely shows the lineage of this book: most of the suggestions, while still applicable to XP, are more suitable to older versions of Windows. There is a good review of services and processes, although this could have been expanded to include commonly seen processes such as NTVDM. (At one point Karp rather understates the danger of viruses "embedded" in data files, although not seriously. This does underscore the point that the book, in various ways, betrays a lack of interest in system security.) There is valuable information about networking in chapter seven, while one could wish that Karp had also covered areas such as multiple LAN configuration storage (involving, for example, laptops that have to be used in a number of offices). (Again, the content on firewalls is a bit simplistic.) Chapter eight has fairly standard documentation on user accounts and administration, and it could have done a better job of explaining sharing permissions and the restricting of the Administrator account. VBScript programming is basically all that is covered in chapter nine, plus an interesting mention of using it for CGI (Common Gateway Interface) functions. Chapter ten closes, ironically, with installation of XP, emphasizing upgrade problems, and including quick documentation for the Recovery Console. Appendices are frequently filler, but Appendix A has a very handy index of where to find or configure a number of settings. The command prompt, as noted, gets a lot of attention, with useful material provided in Appendix C, dealing with creating a command prompt on the task bar, and how to open the prompt within a selected directory. Appendix D has a list of TCP ports, leaving one wondering why the important, and possibly dangerous, ports 135, 137, 138, and 139 got left out. Despite niggling gaps, an abundantly useful guide for anyone using Windows XP beyond the most basic level. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003
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Book description:

In an ideal world, an operating system would do its work in the background while you did your work in the foreground. In our world, however, operating systems constantly get in the way, and Windows XP is no exception. Windows XP contains dozens of important new features designed to make your work easier, including improved performance, but also introduces numerous quirks and unaccountable behaviors that are guaranteed to increase your level of perplexity and frustration. O'Reilly's popular series for troubleshooting Windows comes to the rescue with Windows XP Annoyances. This book is not designed to complain or criticize, but to acknowledge the problems and shortcomings of the operating system in order to overcome them. Complete with a collection of tools and techniques, this book allows users to improve their experience with Windows XP and establish control of the machine--rather than the other way around.