I bought this book for a college class and the next semester they changed the book. I read some things on my own and found some good but I don't think it was worth the money. I still have it though because when I read it, it makes me feel smart. Plus they come out with new ones all the time...dont buy it new. Just get a used one. All they change is the cover and a couple inserts so the pages are different and you think its different than the old one. Dont be fooled.

Although the editorial selection clearly slants to the left, and is bubbling with postmodernism, many of the essays here are quite enjoyable, especially the humorous prose of James Thurber and Mark Twain, and George Orwell's "Politics and the English Lanuage" is delightfully informative. The best expositionary anthology I've yet seen.

College English text yes, but contains a huge variety of stories from notable writers. Short stories yes, but great for those who don't want to delve into full-length novels. Also contains questions to think about after many of the essays and mini biographies of the authors.

John Donne was truly a poetic master. Preeminent among the metaphysical poets, his talent shines brightly in both his early secular and later religious poetry. This volume is particularly useful in its helps with the texts and its discussion and analysis of the meaning and impact of his work. I find these aids useful indeed with a more "difficult" poet like Donne. This book is a good starting place for the study of John Donne's poetry.

This is one of those books that you assume cannot work: an anthology of fantasy-science-fiction-Christmas stories. Somehow it manages to, despite a large gaping flaw near the end.

It kicks off on a strong note with Julian May's heartrending "Star of Wonder," in which a saddened starship commander comes to Earth on a fateful night, and encounters a certain baby born in a desert stable. Dennis McKiernan's "Ornament" is sweet and poignant, although readers may not fully absorb the point of Rufous the fox and the Pysk Tynvyr without reading his other works. Andre Norton provides a sweet "Very Dickinsy Christmas," in which a young woman encounters a ghost at a Christmas ball.

Christopher Stasheff provides a delightful "What are we going to do with Grandfather?", in whichwe see a funny, endearing SF story about charity and Christmas cheer. "I Sing of a Maiden" displays Judith Tarr's great skill in atmosphere and beautiful language, where a young intellectual encounters Thomas Becket, who helps bring the spirit of Christmas back to her. Gael Baudino's "Tidings of Comfort and Joy" is the only blot on this collection: its only purpose seems to be to let her obnoxious, self-absorbed Wiccan protagonist sleep with a Catholic priest. The main character seems to have no identity beyond being a witch; virtually every thought and sentence reflects that. Fortunately the collection sprinmgs back into style with Richard Christian Matheson's "Holiday," complete with a sunbathing Santa.

If you can bypass Baudino's disgusting story, this is a sweet collection of heartfelt, inspired stories about Christmas. Delightful read for Christmas and fantasy buffs alike.

I was reading away happily at the original French version (struggling occasionally over some of the older vocabulary) until I realised I really didn't have enough time (essay due in tomorrow evening), so I quickly nipped round to a friend and borrowed this translation.

And it's not good, people, not good.

While parts of it have travelled quite nicely from French over to English, a lot of it is very badly done - some word for word tranlations and FAR too many repetitions of words. For example, I'm sure I came across 'agitation' three times on one page, and I can tell you I ended up more agitated than Mlle de Chartres ever would be after trying to scrape my way through it.

Needless to say, I'll be allowing more time to read these books beforehand so that I don't have to delve into another poorly translated version again.

Get it in French.

This book is written in an unusual format, almost at a remove from the main character. This however, only serves to heighten the passion of the doomed lovers. In some ways it reminds me of mme de tourvil in dangerous liaisons. Unable to help herself falling in love. Knowing she was doing the wrong thing, and hurting the people who love her most, but unable to stop.

I really enjoyed this book,and I'm sure I'll read it again one day. Apparently this is the only decent book this author ever wrote, the rest being pretty unreadable. If you want a historical novel written in an historical period itself then try this.

This is one of my all-time favorite books. The book is quiet, surprising, and lingering. The relationships detailed in intimacy are revealing, and not just the relationship between the lovers. If you have notread this, do so immediately.

This book was published in Dec 01 which means it was written using .NET Beta 2. It is now completely out of date and many of the examples just don't work. To be fair, there is an "Update" document available for download from Wrox but wht not just buy an up to date book in the first place. My recommendation is "Applied XML Programming for Microsoft .NET" by Dino Esposito, # 0735618011.

VB or C which is it? I don't mind books the have syntax for both VB.net and C#. I also don't mind books that have JUST C#(since I don't know C# why would I mind this?). I Like books that have JUST VB.NET since thats what I like. But this book doesn't do any of these! It provides C# only on many occasions! And as a VB.NET only programmer its awfully hard to build on C# examples. It's almost as if the authors didn't know how to code everything in VB.NET and just skipped it sometimes.

Very interesting title and content. This book is very helpful to learn XML .NET features.

This was the first book I read on computers, when I didn't know anything about them. That was two years ago and now that I look back it was a decent book. I remember reading it and being fascinated, even though some stuff was a little complex. All in all this was a good book. If you're an absolute newbie then read it.

This book is not good for advanced users though. Whether it claims to be or not, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU KNOW A FAIR AMOUNT ABOUT COMPUTER HARDWARE ALREADY. If you do you will be disappointed. That's why I always go for books that are more advanced to push myself.

.. I was not overly impressed. Being new to the inner workings of a PC I was immediately lost. I've had to read chapters over in order to understand what the authors are trying to say. What has helped me was another computer manual that was beutifully illustrated and helped me to recognize the parts & pieces of hardware that Mr. Norton referred to in his book. I did like the glossary though. This book is definitely not one to recommend to beginners.

Peter Norton's Inside the PC, Eighth Edition, and holds your attention better than most other technical books. It is written in a conversational style, which is easy to understand. Norton lays out his topics logically beginning with basic hardware information and becoming increasingly more complex. He uses pictures, graphs, and tables sparingly, only when necessary. Some of the most interesting sections are his Historical Asides, Notes, Technical Notes, Tips, Standards, and his own Principles, which come from his personal experience. There is a Quick Navigator inside the front cover that tells you where in the book to find general areas of information. The book has a useful glossary and a cross-referenced index. This is a good informational book at an intermediate level.

Most of this book expands on topics of no interest to anyone who has a life. The prose is dense and hard to take. There are many technical details no one in their right mind would care about, even slightly.

You would think such a title would, at least, have its share of useful information. Trust me, it's slim pickings.

Out of 1160 pages of text, there are three on startup problems. Basically, you are told to start in Safe Mode. If you can't, good luck!

An example of the type of help you can expect is on page 20 of Chapter One (introductory material): "A value could tell you which interrupt and I/O port settings a piece of hardware uses. Suffice it to say that you'll find the value you need by using the keys, but you'll find the actual information you need by reading the values. There are three types of values: binary, string, and DWORD. Usually, only applications use the binary and DWORD value types. Values usually store configuration data in a format that can't be understood by humans."

I will modestly add, the way the early topics are explained is truly extraterrestrial. But for people who usually reside on this planet (as, I think, I do) this book is to be avoided. I kick myself for having wasted hours trying to follow the first two hundred or so pages.

This book would do well in a competition for the worst book ever written in the English language. I recommend it as a collector's item for that reason.

The authors got me up and running very fast. I didn't care all that much about details at first and this book avoided those details until later. The best thing it did at first was get me on the Internet with few hassles.

The power primers helped get my overloaded and underpowered system running better. I don't have the money to upgrade my system every few months, so getting the most out of what I have now is very important.

Once I did run into problems with my machine, the various theory and troubleshooting sections helped a lot. I found Chapter 15 especially helpful when I couldn't get games to run properly. The material on DirectX was great, even if it is a little out of date.

So, if you're looking for a book that's going to give you everything you need, try this one. I found that it really helped me when I needed it.

John Mueller and this book have saved me more hours of grief with Windows 95 than I could have imagined any one book would do. For example, when I needed some recommendation about how to keep my machine running correctly, I found everything I needed. There are sections on backup, regular maintenance like diagnostics and disk optimization, and some simple troubleshooting. I also found sections on the use of various files that other books don't even hint at. One such example appears in Chapter 9 where the author explains what the various compatibility files like Autoexec.bat are used for.

This book is a tad theory heavy, but even here the author excels. I now know how various parts of Windows 95 operate, making it much easier for me to diagnose problems with my system. The clear and easy to understand diagrams are a real plus. Again, the author lists filenames in the theory section. These file listings recently helped me fix a problem DLL (also known as DLL hell) by simply copying a new version of the DLL over the old one.

One of the authors, John Mueller, thoughtfully left his email address as part of the About the Author. I contacted him and found him extremely helpful and thoughtful of my concerns. Even though Windows 95 is old news, the author spent considerable time helping me use his book more effectively and even helped me around some problems areas within the book.

About the only two problems with this book are the index (not the author's fault since the publisher puts this together for him) and the lack of new hardware information. However, considering this book was put out before much of the modern hardware appeared on the scene, I can hardly blame the author for this oversight. My only thought is that he should keep the book up-to-date better for those of us who are still using Windows 95 and not filling Microsoft's pockets by buying Windows 98.

If you want a complete history of the Microsoft operating system, this is the book for you. It also gives a overview of the system and can help you see how the parts are connected. Unfortanetly, it seems to be written for someone who is upgrading from DOS V.1. The authors seem most concerned with getting old DOS programs and old hardware to work in Windows 98 and assume that anyone with new components and windows programs will never have a problem. This is not true!

The book assumes you are already familier with the old diagnostic tools. For example, it tells you that the untility Dr Watson is much improved but only hints at what the utility does and gives no instruction for using it. (you will not find Dr Watson on the start menu so new users will not be able to even open it.)

I bought the book mainly because I have a software problem with my new computer. This book told me about starting in safe mode and went on to say that if that did not work the problem could be very difficult to track down. Thank you Mr Norton.

Fortanetly.

Despite the fact that Millenium and Win2K have been released, for support folks the version of Windows we most often encounter is still Win98. This book has just about everything you need to know about Windows 98 right there between the covers.

Unlike one of the other previous reviewers, I found the background and theory portions of the book to be incredibly useful in figuring out just what has gotten out of whack with a system that is giving me fits. The explanations of memory usage, peripheral drivers, and FAT32 should be required reading for anyone who does more than word processing on their computer.

The plus of buying this book is that you get a lot of useful information. There were few questions that I couldn't answer by reading a bit. I found that the information was much better organized than the Microsoft documentation and more complete as well.

In addition, the author provides really good productivity tips that have made working with Windows a pleasant experience. I usually don't have a lot of time to waste getting things done, so anything that helps me work more efficiently is welcome.

The big negative for this book is that the author spends a lot of time discussing theory. He'll talk about how things work for pages at a time. While this is OK if you have a lot of time to read, it's time consuming to dig through pages of theory to find the one piece of useful information you need. I did find the theory useful, so I can't say the author was completely wrong in adding it to the book, I just wish all of the theory had been included in separate sections so I could ignore it.

I gave the book five stars because it is an essential reference despite the organizational flaws. Any book that can fix as many problems as this one can deserves high marks. Perhaps the author will include less theory the next time around.

I can't understand why publishers can't leave well enough alone. I loved the first edition of this book. I found each successive edition more expensive and less useful. But this is finally the end; I can no longer require my students to purchase it or even recommend that they use it. In its current form it is bloated with unnecessary information, poorly organized, and, from a scholarly point of view, very much suspect. I am disappointed, frustrated, and upset.

The latest edition of this book has lost much of the classical simplicity and directness that made the previous editions so successful. Ugly icons crowd the page, statements are watered down, but still the text is far clearer than the other popular programmed text by Harder & Steinke. A student considering entering a conservatory or music school would be well prepared having worked through this book.

I'm dissapointed to see Norton's changes, and the increase in price, but I still recommend this text--it still is the best self-instruction program out there.

I bought this book to brush up on my theory before returning to school for a 2nd undergrad degree in music, and I think it's helpful for three reasons. First, I've made it through the first 4 parts with relative ease, but I've also picked up enough tidbits of information to make it really useful. (I always knew how to play a major triad but never thought of the fact that it's made up of two 3rds, a major under a minor, or that a minor chord is a minor under a major.) Second, it is forcing me to memorize things like key signatures for minor keys, which I used to figure out by thinking of the relative major key. (That takes enough extra time to make it awkward at an audition.) Finally, it is a workbook, so you are expected to write the answers right in the book. It helps me to remember when I have to take the time to write the answer down, rather than just thinking of it. I haven't complete the entire book yet, but I know I'm just getting into the things I don't know!

All in all it is helping me to combine my practical performance knowledge with the reasons "why". I'm sure that understanding will lead to better performances.

After having this book (1st ed.) on my shelf for several years, I am compelled to write a review. This book seldom provides answers to any of my NT questions. Recently, after installing a remote disk drive, I encountered a STOP error (fatal error) upon startup. The error message said something about an IRQ problem. The only mention of IRQ in the book's index refers to a single paragraph in the glossary. There was nothing on errors, debugging, system errors, dump files, log files ... anything that would help me understand the problem. This has been my experience every time I open this book. It more likely to infuriate than to inform. However, at nearly 900 pages it does make a good bookend.

I've used this book over the years with enthusiasm. Even though it is somewhat out of date, Norton's books, as always, make it easy to understand what he has to say.