PC Annoyances
Book Review

By Dale Farris, Secretary Golden Triangle PC Club November 2003 In every PC user's life, there's a point when desperate measures must be taken. Some push their PC off a pier or chuck it into a landfill. Others turn their former computing ally into a planter box. But don't give up on your PC yet. Help is at hand! This easy-to-read, accessible book from PC World expert Steve Bass covers the waterfront of PC gripes and gremlins, with fixes for everything from Windows glitches to browsers that won't browse. These tips and tricks are served up in bite-sized portions for quick reading and even quicker fixing. If your PC has ever annoyed you (do we see several billion raised hands?), PC Annoyances is for you. With the flip of a page or two, you can fix that faux pas and have your PC purring again. Author Steve Bass says he has been working with computers for 20 years, and he constantly fumes as some of the dumb things programs do to us, and our PCs. For example, he cites his fury about how RealOne and AOL, just 2 examples, think it is okay to plaster their icons willy-nilly in the Start menu, on the desktop, and in the system tray. From the email messages he regularly receives, he has realized he is not alone in feeling ticked off, annoyed, and aggravated. He wants people to know that it's not their fault, and most important, that there are solutions and fixes to these pesky annoyances. So, if you have ever felt even a drop of animosity toward your PC, this book is for you. Since the many PC annoyances seem never to end, author Bass also requests readers send him email briefly describing their annoyance, and he will do his best to cook up a fix. While he obviously cannot guarantee an individual response to all these messages, he will post some of the best on O'Reilly's site for this book: www.oreilly.com/catalog/pcannoy/annoyance_download.html You can write him about your annoyance at kvetch@pcworld.com. Organization of the Book The book is organized into big categories, listed below. As you browse around the book, you will see that some chapters are divided into specific applications. For example, the email chapter starts with irritations common to all programs, followed by sections on the applications most people use, including Outlook and Outlook Express, Eudora, AOL, Hotmail, and others. The best bet is to browse through the book and mark the pages that interest you, so you can get back to them. Instead of including a CD ROM with files mentioned in the book, Mr. Bass and O'Reilly have created a neat O'Reilly-sponsored Web site, mentioned below, with more than 100 free tools and utilities aimed at ridding your PC of irritations and annoyances. Since these would be so quickly outdated if hard copied onto a CD ROM disc, making the links available means Mr. Bass and the folks with O'Reilly can do a far better, and quicker job of keeping up with these programs. Besides, this also keeps down the price of this super book. Mr. Bass also includes in the book links to Web sites that poke fun at some of the annoying things PCs (and Macs) do. For instance, spend a minute watching Shotgun Studio's "Bob Gets a New Monitor," a video starring Bob and his twelve-gauge showing a creative way to get rid of your old monitor. To see it, go to http://snipurl.com/shotgun. Summary of Table of Contents The seven chapters include: 1)   E-Mail 2)   Windows 3)   Internet 4)   Microsoft Office 5)   Windows Explorer 6)   Music, Video, and CDs 7)   Hardware Key Topics Covered Windows Annoyances Conquer Your E-mail Annoyances Master Microsoft Office Wrassle With Hardware Untie Internet Knots Plus, you will get a Web site link to over 100 utilities that will help you squash bugs, enhance your email, untangle a system snarl, and much more. Book Contents 204 pages; screen shots; figures; tips; URLs; helpful hints; Link to a Web site filled with over 100 utility programs discussed in the book; index; about the author; cover colophon (www.oreilly.com/catalog/pcannoy/annoyance_download.html) Author Steve Bass PC World Contributing Editor About the Author Steve Bass is the well known contributing editor to PC World, writing the "Home Office" column since 1990, the "Home Office Online Newsletter," and dozens of articles including "Net Phones: Dialing Without Dollars," "The Ultimate PC Troubleshooting Guide," and "Great Windows Shareware for Under $50." His annual "How to Fix the Biggest PC Annoyances" article has won PRSA's prestigious Excellence in Technology Journalism award. Steve has also written for Forbes, Family Circle, and Computer Currents, and once had a syndicated newspaper column that was way more work than it was worth. But wait. There's more. Steve has a regular spot on KPCC's "Airtalk," an NPR-affiliate radio show, and Pacifica's "KPFK's "Digital Village." He is currently producing a new computer show, "Phrenology: The New Topology." In a previous life, Steve was a licensed family therapist (so watch what you say), owned PCG Seminars, a training company for mental health professionals, and met his wife while doing magic at Hollywood's Magic Castle. Steve first learned about computers in 1982 with an IBM PC he bought from Computerland. When he asked them for support, they said "Don't use it in the shower." The following day, he founded the Pasadena IBM Users Group and, strangely enough, he still runs the 2,400-member organization (www.pibmug.com). In the late 1980s, Steve co-founded the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (www.apcug.org), a nationwide organization serving user groups. ISBN October 2003:  First Edition 0-596-00593-8 List Price $19.95 $30.95 CAN Publisher Marsee Henon marsee@oreilly.com Suzanne Axtell suzanne@oreilly.com O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, California 95472 707-827-7000 707-827-7114 800-998-9938 FAX 707-829-0104 www.oreilly.com