Windows XP Power Hound

by Preston Gralla

Book Overview

Windows XP can be a great tool, but it is all too easy to trip over Windows XP's annoying traits more often than you leverage its productivity. Windows XP power-users troll online resources, documentation, and the expertise (or lucky finds) of friends for valuable tips and tricks--a keyboard shortcut here, an undocumented double-click there--to eliminate annoyances, save time, and take control of their Windows XP. But what if there was an easier way?...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596006195
• ISBN13: 9780596006198
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 359 Pages
• Weight: 1.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Required reading for new to intermediate users

This book is well worth the price just for the section in the first chapter on how to speedup startup and shutdown and resolve problems with both of them. Most of this information is available on the Internet but why not have it at hand instead of spending hours looking for it? For the novice to intermediate user this is an excellent way to get things Windows XP under control and operating the way it is supposed to. Well-written, easy to follow, with everything explained in plain English, Windows XP Power Hound is recommended for the average user who wants to learn more and customize their system but will contain little new information for someone who is already a power user.

Practical and helpful advice for Windows users

This is an excellent book. Well worth the money for Windows users. There are a wide variety of helpful hints that will help you get the most out of your machine, and tell you a little about the fundamentals along the way. In particular I found the explanation of how to get laptops to go to sleep very rewarding, probably worth the price of the book alone, because it saved me from reinstalling the OS on what was otherwise a well behaved machine. Other notable helpful hints included information on how to clean up your desktop, speed up networking, fix wireless problems and to block popups.

bundles of hacks

Microsoft rules the desktop. And on that desktop, the most common of its operating systems is XP. Hence this book. Gralla offers a set of tricks, or hacks, as another O'Reilly series would term these, if you want to go deeper into your machine than most of your peers. As he points out in the introduction, the book is random access. Not necessary to read sequentially. Instead, try perusing the detailed contents pages. From these, you may be able to find a brief title that addresses a need or concern of yours. Like smarter surfing of the Web, cleaning out your browser cache, or finding wireless hotspots. Hence, if a trick uses Microsoft Word, say, you don't get a full description of all that Word can do. Instead, only enough for your situation. Even in principle, this is not a reference manual. Rather, it complements those.