Upgrading and Repairing PCs 17th Edition ebook

The new edition of Upgrading and Repairing PCs has arrived! Upgrading and Repairing PCs has sold nearly 2.5 million copies in its long career, making it the number #1 hardware book of all time. Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 19th edition will be available in December 2009, and for those of you who haven’t kept up with all the editions, the very first book was available in 1989. So this year marks the 20th year this book has been in print! This book is written by
Scott Mueller, one of the most trusted authoritative hardware voices in the industry, who has taught hardware repair to thousands of computer professionals and enthusiasts.

Upgrading and Repairing PCs has remained popular for many reasons, and we are most proud of our loyal fan base that continues to buy every single edition. What else contributes to this book's longevity and popularity? This book is always well researched, assembled, and put into context that only someone with Scott Mueller’s expertise can. Scott continues to surprise us with the breadth and depth of information added to every edition. It continues to stand alone as the fact PC hardware reference.

Product Details

* Hardcover: 1608 pages
* Publisher: Que; 17 edition (April 3, 2006)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0789734044
* ISBN-13: 978-0789734044
* Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 2.6 inches
* Shipping Weight: 5.5 pounds


With each revision of this series, Scott Mueller brings together more comprehensive, useful information about PC hardware, repair, maintenance, and upgrades than anyone else. "Upgrading & Repairing PCs", now in its 17th edition, is replete with new coverage. For instance, this edition includes a complete guide to Intel and AMD's new dual-core processors, the newest chipsets, and today's state-of-the-art video cards. For those obsessed with performance, there's also a full chapter on overclocking and system cooling.
In nearly 1600 pages of small print and great technical illustrations, there's room for nearly everything: motherboards, BIOSes, memory, disks, interfaces, removable storage, video, audio, USB, Internet connectivity, LANs, power, and more. There's even more information on the included DVD: from coverage of notebooks and printers to complete PDFs of Mueller's last eight editions.
My favorite feature of this new edition is a detailed and up-to-date troubleshooting index that identifies hundreds of common hardware problems, offers likely causes and solutions in a quick phrase or two, and points you to more detailed coverage inside. Covered problems include the audio card sounding strange, the computer is invisible on the network, the USB peripherals are not recognized, and the wireless keyboard doesn't work. Mueller puts you quickly on the right track to solving each of these problems.
Finally, Mueller's DVD contains two full hours of all-new digital video. He takes pride in reshooting for every edition, since these are today's PC maintenance and repair techniques. Best of all, it'll run on your home DVD player too, since you are most likely to need help when your PC isn't working. Amazon does not show the table of contents, so I do that here:
Introduction 1
PC Hardware Introduction and Overview 7
Primary System Components 79
Input/Output Hardware 325
Mass Storage Systems 513
System Assembly and Maintenance 833
Troubleshooting Hardware and Software Problems 945
IBM System Technical Reference Section 1047
Appendixes 1335 

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Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - T-SQL Programming (2006) ebook

Understanding the internals of storage in SQL Server helps database developers and administrators to better create, maintain, and mine information from enterprise data. This practical, hands-on book focuses on the SQL Server 2005 Storage Engine and delves deep into the structures used for storing data, including files, tables, indexes, and data types. Topics also include security details, with coverage of the new SQL Server 2005 security model, and data protection through the backup and restore algorithms. With pragmatic advice, best practices, extensive code samples, and table examples, developers and database administrators will find the guidance they need to better understand how to build powerful, efficient databases.

This book is perhaps the best book out there for understanding SQL 2005 architecture. I know of no other book which offers such advanced understanding of how SQL 2005 stores, retrives, and manages data.

Indeed, the author is a MS SQL MVP and has written with collaboration of those who have wrote the code for MS SQL 2005 at Microsoft.

The author's explaination, however, could be a lot better. For example, here is an exerpt on the author's explaination of IAM (Index Allocation Map):

"An IAM page contains a page header; an IAM page header, which contains eight page pointer slots; and a set of bits that map a range of extents on a file, which doesn't neccessarily have to be the same file that IAM page is in. The header has address of first extent in the range mapped by the IAM. The eight page pointer slots might contain pointers to pages belonging to the relevant object contained in mixed extents; only the first IAM for an object has values in these pointers."

Now, I have worked with databases for over a decade and have good understanding of Indexes and its structure, and I still did not understand what the author was talking about on some sentences.

Pros:
1)Explains data and index storage structures (Page, extents, B-Tree, Keys etc) and how they are managed in transactions (update, delete, insert) better than any book I know.
2)Relatively short book (400 pages) which does not waste words or sentences to make it a thicker book (common practice to write a thicker book for a higher price).

Cons:
1)Tries to combine MS SQL 101 topics (What is Master, MSDB, TEMP, and MODEL db?) with expert subject matter (What is IAM, Cluster Keys, RID, etc).
2)Writing is sometimes indecipherable.
3)Mostly not for the beginners (despite its rudimentrary coverage of the basics).

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ASP.NET 2.0 FOR DUMMIES

If you want to learn server side scripting in VBScript you can go pretty much anywhere. If you want to learn server side scripting in JScript then this one of the few places to go. The JScript examples aren't much but they're better than nothing and the examples all work. I knew C/C++, SQL and some client side Javascript so it seemed like a natural way to go but there is simply not much written about server side scripting in JScript.

Even though most of the examples are written in VBScript, they are clear and challenging enough to get you going. One the hardest hurdles is loading the Personal Web Server. If you don't already have a favorite HTML or ASP editor try UltraEdit32 and do yourself a favor from the beginning download the Script Debugger if your using Internet Explorer. It's free and like so many other things that go into learning Active Server Pages "it's better than nothing".

Overall I like the book and the humor is tolerable. If he ever wants to write another I'd be happy to provide some additional JScript examples. I know enough to get buy for now and in the end that's what I wanted. I had a project that needed to get done by the end of the year and it looks like I'll make it.

Thanks to all of you who have written these reviews in the past. For the most part they have faithfully guided me to the most useful and most useable sources of information available.

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ASP.Net bible

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