PC Hardware and A+ Handbook

by Kate J. Chase

Learn the practical, real-world techniques you need to install, upgrade, fine-tune, and troubleshoot your PC--and even prepare for the CompTIA A+ certification exam Designed to help you master the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735620490
• ISBN13: 9780735620490
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Length: 620 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 7.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Complete text... for hardware.

Similar to another review, the title of the book is sort of deceiving. This book intensively covers hardware. Although, it doesn't cover anything dealing with operating systems or configuration. As for the actual content of the book, it is great. Very complete, well written, and simple step by step directions. It covers many aspects of hardware. The book is primarily written for (mostly) modern computers (from 2000+). It barely covers older machines, but old machines aren't really an issue anymore. In terms of technical manuals, the author makes it pretty interesting while providing additional information about certain memory, graphics cards, sound cards, etc. that may otherwise be difficult to obtain. It was a great supplimentary book for my A+ certification.

This book helped me get back in step with hardware

I came back to an IT and deployment division with my hardware skills a tad rusty (sorry to say floppies were dominant last time I worked with hardware). I bought four different books and was not happy with any of them when I happened upon the Chase MSPress book in a colleague's book shelf. This book quickly helped me get back up to speed and was enough to make me get two of her others (Excel 2003 from O'Reilly and her FrontPage 2003 Savvy? from Sybex). Particularly looking forward to the XP Encyclopedia from Wiley & Sons I just saw listed for the first time tonight because my enterprise workplace is only now making the move from NT4.51 and 2000 into XP (almost in time for Vista's release, don't you know?). Jim Boyce's name is also on it and I've also liked his work.

Enough of a book to go into detail.

Most of the books you find on PC hardware are so simple that they really don't provide you with the information you are seeking. Finally this book has come out with sufficient detail that it will indeed help you find problems with your computer, tell you what features to look for in your next one, or provide the background to understand the older system that you may be working on. This is a full sized - 656 page - computer book that is quite up to date. It is quite up to date, including information on things like the new Serial ATA disk drives and the AMD Opteron that is changing Intel's thoughts on how to do their next CPU's. The book is intended to help with installing, upgrading, fine-tuning and troubleshooting your PC. It also provide a bit of information to help pass the CompTIA A+ certification. Notice I said a bit of information, this is not a cram guide to the test. This book presumes that you really want to know how the PC hardware works, is configured, or what to do if it doesn't.