Steve Bass has crafted a fine book, providing clear, easy-to-implement steps to solving those nettlesome little problems that get in the way of getting work done. The book covers seven general computing areas: email; Windows; internet; Microsoft Office; Windows Explorer; music, video and CDs; and hardware; and a multitude of applications within each area. It’s written in a short, snappy style and is peppered with links to software and shareware to help you keep your PC running without hiding menus, disappearing or overcrowding taskbars, weird things happening to your numbered lists in MS Word, and—my personal fav—the loss of desktop organization when Windows crashes. But the best thing about this book is that all the URLs for all the tips, fixes, and software downloads are listed by chapter and conveniently located at http://www.oreilly.com/pcannoyances
In PC Annoyances, Mr. Bass writes about the really dumb things programs do to us, and is “floored that some companies—RealOne and AOL for instance— actually think it’s okay to plaster icons willy-nilly in the start menu, on the desktop, in the system tray.” And, he knows he’s not alone in feeling this way, so when Tim O’Reilly called and asked him to expand the PC Annoyances columns he’s written in PC World into a book, he agreed.
Mr. Bass has been using computers at work for about 20 years, and is a Contributing Editor to PC World, writing the “Home Office” column since 1990. His work has also appeared in Forbes, Family Circle, and Computer Currents, and he has a regular spot on KPCC’s “Airtalk” and KPFK’s “Digital Village”. Mr. Bass is the founder of the Pasadena IBM Users Group, and 22 years later, he still runs the group. He also co-founded the Association of Personal Computer User Groups http://www.apcug.org, of which the Tokyo PC Users Group is a member. The book is written from the point of view of PC users, but doesn’t talk down to the reader. If you know your way around a keyboard and can use common programs to get things done, you’ll understand this book and benefit from the gems within.
Many of you know that I’m a die-hard Eudora user. Eudora’s always been the way I read email, and I’ve gotten to know it pretty well, but in five short pages of tips and tricks specifically for Eudora users I’ve learned more than I expected—all of it very useful—and including things like slimming Eudora headers down by entering the commands provided in the Eudora.ini file. This chapter is not just about Eudora. The author helps you understand and solve a host of general email problems and then guides you through the annoying things that Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, AOL, Hotmail and Netscape mail do, and how to stop them from happening. Mr. Bass has also provided me with a way to pre-address an email to my mom, for example, without having to go through the clicks necessary to open a new email, and select an address for the To line. There’s also a sidebar on Eudora’s keyboard shortcuts.
Actually there’s sidebars everywhere: the outside edges of each page list tips, hints, and URL references for the specified topics and a host of other stuff that’s at least entertaining, if not enlightening. I don’t know if AOL mail is so less annoying that it only needs two pages (call it a hunch, but I don’t think so), but that’s all the space that’s given to the bothersome things that AOL mail does.
The book covers Windows annoyances in 26 pages. Some of you scoff, and assume that it would take at least 2,600 pages to document repairs for all the irritating things that Windows does, but this is a really good start. Mr. Bass encourages the reader to perform the Number One, Biggest Fix of All Time and switch to Windows XP. He then spends a lot of time and consideration telling you how to ensure that your hardware and software will be compatible with XP; gives you valuable information on the new help engine in XP; and even tells you why it’s OK to activate the Windows Product Activation feature. In addition, you’ll learn to take charge of your Start Menu and System Tray, restore a Quick Launch toolbar that’s gone missing, shut down in one click, and learn where and how to keep multiple network settings for the various places you plug in to. Now that you can receive faxes in XP, the quick fix to faster printing is to associate the fax files with a viewer other than Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Changing the association prevents the dreaded Photo Printing Wizard from opening up and dragging you through the click, click, clicking necessary to answer all the questions before printing commences.
There are also tips on fiddling with the Registry—a place in the PC I rarely go, but would be willing to attempt with Ball’s helpful advice—saving disk space by deleting old system restore points data, faster disk cleanups and compressions, and at least 12 other explanations that will help you understand Windows and force it to do your bidding. This book has made me look good to my family, because I’ve used the suggested screen capture utility SnagIt to show them where on the monitor they need to look for a particular command. The demo at http://snipurl.com/snagit_vid is short, to the point and well spoken. I’ve also learned how to protect my system from dumb installations, or programs that want to plaster their shortcut in every possible location.
As for fiddling around with the Internet, Mr. Bass provides over 40 tips “that untangle and streamline browsing (both Internet Explorer and Netscape), unleash Google, pound AOL into compliance, make IMing feasible and fun, and otherwise make your Internet experience nuisance-free”. I especially like the way the tips are organized under easy-to-find topic headings within the chapter, like “Make Your PC an Ad-Free Zone” which provides two programs to help you keep those annoying popups from popping; “Pictureless Pages Predicament” which tells you why sometimes you see that funny red X instead of a photo, and what to do about it; and “Clear Dead Links from your Favorites Menu” which tells you about AM-Deadlink that detects dead and duplicate links.
For those of us who tear our hair out trying to figure out why Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Outlook Express programs sometimes do those strange things, buy this book and save your hair. By using the almost 40 pages of tips to halt the most annoying things these four programs do, the G&A Factor (Grief and Aggravation) when using these programs should go way down. I only wish he’d included Access in the book, although that would surely have doubled the total number of pages.
There is also a whole chapter on Windows Explorer, and it needs it. In it, Mr. Bass tells you about “a handful of free file management utilities and two terrific alternatives to using Windows Explorer.” In addition to showing how to speed up searches for files on your hard drive (a must now that we all have HDDs larger than the state of Montana), there is also information on how to manage your Zip files — info that the good people at Zip apparently left out.
Lastly, we come to the chapter on Music, Video and CD. And as Mr. Ball says, “With great power comes great irritability. There’s a maze of file formats, a gaggle of players and the many complications surrounding disc burning.” The chapter focuses on the bigger annoyances of multimedia and your PC, including keeping all your music at the same volume, playing sound files quickly and easily, and turning off RealOne’s Message Center Ad (Yeah!). One interesting item is about using labels for your CDs. Steve’s advice is, no, don’t use them, because over time the label can shrink, or tear, pulling off the disks protective layers and distorting the reflective layer that holds the data. If the label is not applied precisely centered, it can make the disk wobble as it spins rendering it unreadable. If the label comes off while the drive is spinning, you risk destroying your drive.
All together this is a great reference book for the general PC user. I don’t expect a run-up of book purchases from the Tokyo PC Users Group, but if you have family and friends who often turn to you for advice on how to do something or stop something from happening, at 14 bucks this is a good book to buy for them. I’m glad I have it, and will buy copies for my family.