This book has a very clear objective. It wants to get you from W95 to Linux on your PC and show you that you can get the same functionality you are used to on a PC in Linux.

It succeeds in that narrow scope. I am typing this from my newly running Linux system. However, this book is not enough to really get you running smoothly.

Linux is still not ready for the average user -- though the book would argue otherwise. There are enough gotchas to take you out of the narrow path of the book pretty quickly, and then you will need other resources. In my case, I need to learn how to get my sound card working and my Zip drive running, and the PPP dialer working. The paths suggested in the book didn't work.

Fortunately, the author points you to other resources on the web so you can continue your search.

The book comes with a copy of Red Hat 6.0. So it gives you everything you need to get started. However, I would also buy a reference type book as well.

I am a Computer Science professor at a community college. This is the fourth year I have taught Linux as a Unix system administration course. My biggest headache has always been selecting a text book that clearly explains the installation process.

Linux, Clearly Explained lives up to its name. This book was written by a teacher who outlines each procedure in a step-by-step manner. Not only was the installation a breeze, but the book carried you along from configurations to manipulations. It is very detailed in the use of the gnome desktop.

The only shortcoming for my class was the lack of information on NIC configuration. The book assumes that all users have modems for their online connections. However, configuring the NIC was easy and part of the installation process.

This book is also an easy read. Technical terms are explained before they are used. The book is written for the novice and remains true to its audience.

This book comes with a RedHat 6.0 cdrom. This version is now over a year (probably more) old. This means if you have a computer that is the same age, the cdrom will probably have the necessary drivers. Newer computer owners may need to download drivers off the Internet. The RedHat web page is a good source.

A second cdrom contained WordPerfect 8.0 for Linux. I loaded it and I am now using it as my main wordprocessor. I can save files in the MS-DOS format and transport them to any MicroSoft Windows platform.

Finally, as an educator, the only improvement needed to satisfy me would be questions and exercises at the end of each chapter. Bryan, I hope your listening.

Note: I was one of the technical editors for this book. These are my true thoughts and are not a result of my involvement with the production of _Linux Clearly Explained_.

One of the problems with many Linux books I have seen is their generality. Most try to appeal to the largest possible audience by merely including generic information and using only universally known (and often archaic) commands and tools. This often confuses the reader and greatly decreases their learning and productivity.

LCE has taken a single setup, Red Hat 6.0 with the GNOME user interface, and thoroughly explained how to use it. A book including _everything_ related to Linux, from beginner to guru, would have to be thousands of pages long. LCE concentrates getting the fundamentals across clearly and coherently. It is written on a level that is neither way above an experienced computer user, nor so beneath them that no useful information is presented.

I believe the most important aspects of this book is its treatment of GNOME. Many formerly command-line tasks are explained using GNOME-related tools. Before reading the book, I was unaware of how robust GNOME had become and was inpressed by how much it could do.

Overall, I highly recommend _Linux Clearly Explained_ to anyone starting on their path to Linux enlightenment.

This is an excellent, well-written book. The strategies it details for finding information on the Internet should be very helpful to the starting searcher. Unfortunately, this book written too many internet-years ago, back in 1996. There is no mention of AltaVista or HotBot, and Inktomi, the search engine behind HotBot, is described as "one of the newer search engines on the Web." The discussion on "Preparing Your Browser" also makes good points, but it refers to Netscape Navigator 1.2. Of course, there was no Internet Explorer back then. In summary, kudos to the author as well as encouragement to bring out the next edition.

Bryan Pfaffenberger's Web Search Strategies is by far the best Web search book I've seen yet. I teach an introductory World Wide Web class, and am also a librarian. This book concisely presents strategies for various types of searches (quick, subject tree, searching trailblazer pages, "deep searches" using AND, OR and NOT operators, and specific tips for the search engines including Lycos and Infoseek. Also included are tips on searching subjects such as Reference, Government Information, and searching for software to download. A great book that helps whittle information overload

This has been a boon and an eye-opener. The text and the CD have shown me several programmes which I now use - PGP, TSS, Win-Secure-it. I urge all readers to carefully consider the privacy implications of using the web and email. This is an important resource book

While this book helped me through the basics, it did so in a confusing and round-about fashion. All too often subjects were brought up, only to be glossed over and referenced to a chapter further along in the book. That jumping around made for very confusing reading. It was also dissapointing to see so many chapters written about such off-topic subjects such as verb usage and finding a topic for a web page. This book could have, and should have, been much smaller (read cheaper) for the actual HTML 4 information it contains.

Teaching HTML for the past 5 years I have certainly found that there very few really in depth reference manuals, this book does have some really nice features, however at the same time there things that confused me about the book.

One thing I found odd was the 4 pages covering XML/XSL, after reading this I think the author could have left this out of the book and expanded and very good section on severs and server options.

Part III, development of pages with HTML is very good with fairly good coverage of each section. In the next edition they should bring some of the web editors more up to date. One section I found to very well written is Part IV or CSS, the authors seem to have everything covered here.

Part VII - cross browsers, deal with DHTML and JavaScript, I found this section to be okay but certainly more, much more information should have been included. One of the most impressive sections of the book is Appendices A through G, which is by far the best breakdown of attributes, CSS syntax, color and hex conversion I have ever seen.

The cd included is mostly made up of trial version of software and most of the software has newer version available, so this will also need fixing for the next release. Overall, since I don't need the eval software, I found that the book certainly serves a purpose and for those new to the HTML arena this book should be helpful.

This is a great book for an experienced Web developer. The authors take special pains to draw attention to what's new in HTML 4 and to indicate what works in each browser (and browser version). This book is always within reach of my computer. The index is excellent and the explanations and examples are clear and relevant. The appendices are also very helpful in showing what works in which browser.

I've seen many HTML books and this is the best one out there. So many of the books that are sold as HTML 4 books are really just re-packaged HTML 3.2 books. This one was written for HTML 4, which is really a different animal than HTML 3.2 It includes a comprehensive section on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the Document Object Model (DOM), and Javascript, and how the three work together to make Dynamic HTML.

This is a good tutorial book on HTML - it explains concepts that most tutorials gloss over, especially the separation between structure and presentation. In fact, this was the only tutorial I liked out of the dozens on the shelf - none of the others did justice to style sheets. It's a pleasure to read Pfaffenberger's writing, but very disappointing to see the numerous editing mistakes (the Appendices are rendered useless by systematic errors, and there are several cut-and-paste errors in the main body of the book). IMHO he should have left out the ActiveX and CDF chapters, and expanded the layout section; it especially needs more example screenshots.

The strengths of this book are its clearly written, easy to understand style and the fact that it starts you out by using the latest HTML 4.0 way of writing web pages without covering previous use of HTML. When writing my first Web documents, this is the perspective that I wanted to start from.

The book's weaknesses are its lack of depth and detail. You will need to buy another book like "HTML: The Definitive Guide" to get more detail on many topics. The book is also a little out-of-date wrt to features supported by Netscape vs. Microsoft IE. (But that is to be expected.) There are also some annoying technical errors in the examples and illustrations.

For a beginner, this book was well worth the time and money spent, particularly for those who want to learn HTML, not just a web authoring tool.

I found this book very useless. It doesn't talk about GNOME internals, all it teaches you is what to expect from the icon when you click on it. I was very disappointed with this book.

This book, despite its size, is really just a presentation of Gnome. Many, many pages are taken up with descriptions of various programs that work under Gnome. It is nice to know what is out there, but I quickly needed more information than this book could provide.

Most of all though, this book is very out of date.

I have used Windows for years, even created as well as used software applications. But Linux/Unix has long been a mystery to me. I installed Red Hat 7.1 onto my home computer and the automatic installation was easy enough but then I was dumbfounded. I tried to get some jobs done, like installing software, viewing files etc. but didn't know how.

This book does not tell you everything. In fact, you need to get some other book that is completelly about Linux administration and command line use. But for using the Gnome windowing system, this book is a great start. In a couple of days I was using Gnome like Windows, with no trouble.

Now, I just need to dive deeper into Linux admin and command line use... ;)

This boook/reference work in question , i.e., Que's Computer User's Dictionary by Bryan, Ph.D. Pfaffenberger is a new edition of a handy and quite practical dictionary of computer terms and other computer related items. It, the book, even manages to incorporate some helpfull tips and cautions for computer users, as well as pronunciation guide/aid where needed. Useful for both the novice and seasoned user and is a nice addition to any computer users library. The reason why I did not give it a higher mark, was because of its dated material. Even so, I consider it to be an adequate reference tool.

No plot, no tips, no tricks, and no pics: Are these the ingredients of the worst book ever? Well, they would be if it weren't a dictionary. Fortunately I am reviewing a dictionary, Webster's New World Computer Dictionary to be precise. What you have here is your basic dictionary: Words and acronyms in bold followed by the definition the whole shebang flows down two columns per page. The difference is the focus, Webster's New World Computer Dictionary focuses solely on Computers so the reference won't be much use to scrabble players looking for a two-letter word that starts with Q (answer "qa", it's legit, trust me).

Reviewing a dictionary is difficult. The obvious things to do is read a bevy of definitions and see if they are understandable or if they send the reader off to another dictionary to figure out what Bryan Pfaffenberger is trying to say. Having read more definitions than I care to enumerate I can honestly say they are pretty easy to follow. None of the definitions left me wondering what I had just read actually meant so that's gotta count for something.

The other test I devised for Webster's New World Computer Dictionary was one I hoped would test Bryan Pfaffenberger's completeness. I began to think of random computer terms. I would shout one aloud and flip the pages of Webster's New World Computer Dictionary to see if my word of the moment had stumped Webster's New World Computer Dictionary. DDR? It's in there, SLIP? Ditto, foo? Covered. Try as I might there was no computer related word/term/acronym I could come up with to successfully stump Webster's New World Computer Dictionary (though qa was not included). My failure to stump Bryan Pfaffenberger may have more to do with my meager vocabulary than the robustness of Webster's New World Computer Dictionary so take my experiment for what it's worth.

Now I am entering dangerous territory, valuing the book. One of the keys to rating any kind of reference book is the value component. At only seventeen dollars Webster's New World Computer Dictionary is fairly inexpensive but if you have the Internet it's fairly unnecessary. You can look up just about any term (well, probably every term) found in Webster's New World Computer Dictionary and get the same info from the net. I suppose that Webster's New World Computer Dictionary might be useful if you find yourself reading computer manuals or editing computer oriented articles and didn't want to make the short Google jaunt but, personally speaking, I can't imagine actually needing this book (I am obviously the exception to the rule, the book is in it's ninth edition). Still, if you find yourself in a situation where you need a hard copy dictionary Webster's New World Computer Dictionary won't let you down.

MacMice Rating: 3 out of 5

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Chris Seibold
...

I don't need to be guided through browser selection, Netscape v. IIS, or a re-hashing of the OSI model. The core of this book, IMHO, is found in chapters 9-13. If you're willing to spend the money for a 400 page reference with 100 pages of solid material, then it's worth buying.

The book is well-written and, even three years later, much of the discussion is valuable reference. Of course, the information on specific products is dated. However, the material on security/encryption schemes and authentication is first rate and clear. The guidance on extranet design approaches is still valid. This book should be in second edition by now. If it is, buy the 2nd edition new. As a used book, the security and authentication parts are worth a discounted price.

The author treats issues such as setting up a CA, authenticating browsers, choosing encryption algorithms and securing the https server well. It's very HTTP focused, and barely touches on how to get from the EDI way of doing things to the extranet way, but it's easily the best book on the topic I've seen. He has an unfortunate tendency to get off topic, for example delving into how to choose a browser, why tcp/ip is insecure, etc., but overall the book is well written.

Blah, Blah Blah, This book is far too wordy. Would make anyone who knew the slightest about computers fall asleep, Dull! Would hate for a newbie to pick up this book, would make you fear computing. Alot of info prestented is out dated and sometimes down right WRONG! Best thing to do with this book is put it by your bed and if you can't sleep read a paragraph and you'll be fast asleep.

Usually a computer manual would bore the reader to death with its technicalities. This book isn't the case. Although it comprehends a great deal of technical aspects it focuses on the humanistic and ethical aspects of the technology as well. It also discusses both the technology past and its future.

This book was the best beginners computer book I have found to date. I teach computers to Senior Citizens and middle aged adults. This book has helped me introduce them to computers with an understanding that is relative to thier way of thinking. It is not too technical so that the average person, someone who is not techie, can understand computers, their relationship to today's world and its future growth. I would recommend it to anyone who would like to get a look at computers from a non-heavy technical aspect.