Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

All advertisings are free and short, except this one, called 'Windows XP inside out'. An the price is expensive...! Unfortunately, this book is more out than in: it is SUPERFICIAL and MISSES a lot of CRUCIAL POINTS! So the title is simply fallacious and false! Like the pretentious `Conquer Windows XP. These catchy phrases are here only to attract buyers, like all flashy and impressive slogans! The main and inexcusable drawbacks are: 1) It misses important and crucial points: it doesn't `dig into XP and really put your PC at work', like it want us to believe!!! This is clearly the main negative point since the principal reason for buying this book is precisely to master XP. For example, it doesn't explain how to improve a DSL connection ..., what are all the useful tools that come with XP Professional (included in the Support folder of the XP CD-ROM), booting with Linux and the list goes on. 2) It barely scratches the surface for non-obvious, important issues and topics. For example, it has only a few pages about Windows Script Host and invites the reader to go elsewhere!!! Other topics, like internet, networking are only superficially touched in many important aspects. 3) The book is not coherent since from one side it explains the obvious, although it labels itself as destined for intermediate to advanced users and doesn't explain the uncommon elements. 4) Many `tricks, tips' and elements are obvious. For example, the book wastes time and space to indicate what the desktop, an icon, the taskbar and the start button are!!! It also `tells' you to `click on an icon to perform the related action'! So one may pretend that this book is destined for everyone. But, first, the book clearly indicates (in the first paragraph of the cover page): "hey you know your way around your desktop-so know dig into windows xp'. Second, the level is clearly stated as `intermediate/advanced'. Third, even if we consider the book as being for everyone, then why it doesn't explain what is less obvious. It's the major drawback explained below. 5) Many non-obvious elements are not explained! For example, the author talks about %systemroot%, but explains nothing. Although it explains what an icon is!!! Unfortunately, the index has nothing for this word. It's only by reading other chapters that apparently have nothing to do that the reader can know what this means. An the list continues. 6) It pretends to provide useful software but gives in reality useless elements. The CD-ROM is a commercial for Microsoft and third-party products. It gives you for example Partition Magic demo and some other trial versions but a) they are known (they can be found in virtually every magazine CD) and 2) they are not really useful (they're only demos!). However, it exist a lot of software that is really useful and free for cleaning the registry, increasing download speed, increasing DSL connection speed and so on. But the CD(ROM doesn't provide them or even indicates where to find them. 7) The books deals with the Home and Professional edition but it doesn't clearly distinguish what is specific to the Professional edition. So the reader tries what the book ways, but find that it doesn't work or appear as expected. There is only a small indication at the beginning of the specific part to tell it's only for the Professional version!!! But in the middle, there are elements for both versions! And then for only one. So it's really confusing and time-consuming. 8) Lack of critical view. The ad-in-disguise also shows in the objectivity and the comments. One of the main points may be the privacy. The author completely misses crucial issues, like information transmitted to Microsoft or third-party companies without the user's knowledge or acceptance and so on. The author has an overly optimistic view of the software, not only XP, but Internet Explorer and other Microsoft products. For example, it considers that you can select your search engine with Explorer while actually you can only select one source among a very limited list!!! (It however exists a tip to select the search engine you want, and not the one Microsoft proposes.) For finding help, it always refers to Microsoft or the like. No comment. 9) There is an electronic version of the book in the Cd-ROM. And then? If the book is itself of very limited usefulness... So if you really want to know Windows XP, tweaking, optimization, and the liken don't buy this ad looking like a `book'.