Jase T. Wolfe said
I'm not completely sure who the target audience for this title is, as a book that in one section covers automated registry search and replace and cloning your hard drive via a SATA/IDE to USB device and the next switching the Windows Media Player skin will probably not be 100% useful to most readers.
This is one of the first in this series that I think is a little off topic. Like its predecessors, the book does offer solutions to many bugs and issues Vista presents, but for the most part is focused on familiarizing users with the normal administrative settings and features of the OS; taking the reader to a Power User level. A few of the chapters provide information readily available (free) from the Annoyances web site (and in a few instances I've found provides downloads and how-to's the book says you can't actually do), as well as what you could find via a Google search, but there is enough unique content to the release to make this a good purchase.
As a side note, the book has 60 pages dedicated to scripting: MS-DOS, VBScript, and PowerShell. Although I'm glad to see this introduction being made to readers, no one should be under any illusions about the information provided: it is a very glossy overview and you will absolutely need to read other dedicated guides before you will be able to script any of the languages they cover.
L. Hayes said
I got this because it was one of the newest Vista books at the time and it's nowhere near as good as any of the previous Vista books I bought. The author doesn't even bother to cover any of Vista's multimedia features in any real depth. Like the rest of the book, he chapter on multimedia, Chapter 4, is a mishmash of half talk and psuedo tips that don't actually help anything. If you think Vista's annoying, this book with it half hearted attempt at humor and irreverance is ten times as annoying.
If you already have a Vista book this book won't add anything. If you are already familiar with Vista this book won't add anything. If you've never seen a computer before this book might help you --- if you can dig through pages of nonesensical sideways talk to find anything of import.
Worst of all, it's proceed at your own risk if you dare attempt anything this guy promises is going to improve anything. Examples? Plenty. Pages 71 to 73 on deleting In-Use files. Hello, log off. Pages 73 to 75 in disabling Zip. Hello, why in the world would you want to? Any zip program you install will likely extend, tweak or modify the basic zip anyway. 70 pages on the registry with mostly useless tidbits but 2 pages on optimizing your computer to make it boot faster ?! DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?!
The entire chapter on performance tips could be summed up as: Turn off all Vista features. Oh yeah, and get Vista to shutdown quickly by hacking the registry to override features meant to protect you from being a dumb *ss in the first place. Pausing to make sure you want to really want to kill Word when you have a document you haven't saved is a good thing, not pausing and dumping everything is bad. Not to mention it could make your computer unstable.
Max Heffler said
This is a good book but I am still annoyed at Vista. I still have not been able to solve my biggest peeve regarding explorer menus that won't stay still.
Pule Nong said
This book like all the O'reilly books brings you nothing but quality material as you need it. David Karp covered almost every problem you might encounter using Windows Vista, and of course the Solutions to these problems. This is a large book and it's not like the many other tech books that you read and get bored along the way, no it isn't, David has done a great job of entertaining and yet getting to the point.
This is a must have book for anyone using windows Vista. I highly recommend it.Windows Vista Annoyances: Tips, Secrets, and Hacks
Kelly Carlson said
This book made the change EASY!!
Going from XP to Vista was a snap with the help of this book. If you are like me, a very amateur PC user used to XP, this book will make the switch to Vista painless and even fun.
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