Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks: Tips, Secrets and Solutions

by David A. Karp

In an ideal world, an operating system would do its job in the background, while you did yours in the foreground. In reality, though, operating systems often get in the way, fouling up the process at... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596008767
• ISBN13: 9780596008765
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great reference for fine tuning your system

The O'Reilly Annoyances books for windows are a real Godsend. They have always opened up some of the inner workings of windows so that one is able to tailor the system to a much better performer than what comes with the standard setup. Anyone who wishes to make the OS more to their liking needs to have this book as the wealth of information in one source can't be beat. There are a lot of tweaks that you can make that Microsoft doesn't provide easily found information for. This book is a must have to have that information right at hand.

Just about what I wanted

This book knocks off many of the rough edges of Microsoft's XP operating system by revealing the complications of their programming and their convoluted logic. For the discerning user struggling to be master of the machine rather than the captive user of a second rate product

An absolute must for anyone living with/supporting/rolling out Windows XP

Windows XP is a fact of life for most of us. The sad fact of the matter is that Windows is bloated and sick - loaded with performance/security/stability robbing settings and "extras". Karp's excellent volume - simple enough for the layman but deeply valuable even for the experienced lays out how to pare down XP to fighting form. You can't change XP's basic nature - but you can improve matters significantly. Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks is well organized (like all O'Reilly books) and full of practical, real-world tips. If you must support or roll out XP in a corporate environment, then this book becomes essential to your survival (or at least your sanity). Is it the last word? Probably not - but you will not actually read or use much more than you get here. Highly recommended.

Gives you a less annoying XP

Isn't that a neat picture on the cover? Certainly grabs one's attention. Possibly the most complaints about Microsoft Windows XP come not from Mac or linux users, but from some long suffering Microsoft users themselves. Karp hopes to alleviate some of these complaints in this updated book. Perhaps the greatest irony of the book is the space devoted to dealing with Service Pack 2 issues. Remember that SP2 is meant to fix many bugs. And indeed it does. But in the process, it changed various system settings so that, for example, some of your network applications might now seemingly break. Karp explains that it was because SP2 was doing its job and tightened up the Microsoft Windows Firewall. So he shows how to tweak the latter to re-enable your applications. Overall, the book is very detailed. But this can be a great help if you apply one of his fixes. Since the steps he gives are explicit enough to easily follow. Realistically, this second edition is unlikely to be the last. The next version of XP is bound to generate annoyances of its own.

Great Timesaver

I've put off using Windows XP as long as possible. I recently decided that I wanted to use it for the screen shots of my next book since it's in color and the palettes in XP look so much nicer. But it's driving me nuts! I hate the cutesy icons and the dumbed down feel. I have a copy of Windows XP Annoyances sitting right on my desk to help me overcome the many things that really do annoy me. I don't have time to read a tome on using Windows XP, so when I run into something I want to do I just grab this book. As most O'Reilly book, it's easy to use because of its great indexing. I can normally find a topic within seconds, read it, fix it, and get back to work. I've been able to get rid of most of the cutesy stuff but not all of it. This book doesn't just cover the easy things either, it gets into networking and internetworking issues, working with and repairing the registry, lots of troubleshooting topics and scripting and automation.Every Windows XP owner should also own this book.