PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Preface

PC Hardware in a Nutshell. An oxymoron, as it turns out. When Robert began work on the first edition of this book in late 1998, he planned to write a 300-page book in five months. Barbara joined the project early, at first as the researcher and later as the full coauthor. After more than 18 months of working seven days a week, including last-minute rewrites to make everything as current as possible, we finally completed the first edition.

Robert decided to write the first edition because he couldn’t find a good answer to what seemed to be a simple question. Robert, who has extensive PC experience, wanted to buy his first CD burner but didn’t know much about them. He needed information about how to choose, install, configure, and use a CD burner. It would have been easy to check articles about CD burners in hardware-oriented magazines and enthusiast web sites, but Robert didn’t trust them to provide accurate and unbiased information.

He next checked the shelf of PC hardware books he owns. What he found in those books was lots of interesting information, but a surprising dearth of useful information. For example, one very popular title devoted less than five of its 1500+ pages to CD-R and CD-RW, and most of these pages described only the history and low-level functioning of these devices. Advice on how to choose a CD burner? Advice on how to install it, configure it, use it, or troubleshoot it? Next to nothing. That same book devoted nearly 70 pages to a list of vendors—information ...