Maintenance

Rohrbough does much handholding, devoting an entire chapter to the importance of using a grounding strap to prevent static damage to components. Quickly, though, she shifts to specific procedures and details what you must do in order to improve your computer in various ways. All the cost-effective upgrades--including RAM installation, the addition of a hard drive, video card replacement, and processor swapping--receive plenty of attention. The author even goes into detail on replacing motherboards. Her procedures are detailed and, provided you don't run into any really strange problems, will help you get the job done. Unfortunately, many of the photographs that illustrate this book are too dark and poorly cropped.

Exotic problems and unusual upgrades are beyond the scope of Upgrade Your Own PC. For those situations, you'll want a large, data-heavy hardware book that provides more reference material. --David Wall

Because Apple designed the Macintosh line with easy upgrades (among other things) in mind, the job of this book is mainly to explain what sorts of upgrade products you can buy and how to distinguish among them. In large measure, this is a matter of decoding jargon and explaining at a fairly high level how things work. For example, Stauffer goes into detail on video resolution and why you might want to replace your current monitor and video card with better ones, defining terms and trade names as he goes. He also tells how to perform some upgrades step by step: for instance, how to upgrade a processor chip and configure a Mac for use on an AppleTalk network. --David Wall

Topics covered: Hardware upgrades for iMac and PowerMac G-series computers, and the related software procedures. Input devices (keyboards, scanners, and the like), connectivity units (such as modems), monitors, storage media (including CD recorders, extra hard disks, removable disks, and tape drives), and network hardware.

Zacker is nothing if not patient, and he takes plenty of time to explain important concepts--such as standards documents--without seeming condescending, by using conceptual diagrams that usually are clear and helpful. He's not as quick to express opinions about which is the best of several ways to do a particular task, and instead explains everything and leaves it up to the reader to decide. --David Wall

Topics covered: Local and wide area networking for personal computers, both generically and as implemented under Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Novell NetWare. Hardware and architecture coverage is followed by a detailed discussion of protocols, naming schemes and name-allocation services, directory services (notably Novell Directory Services and Active Directory), and Internet services.

First, Steinberg answers all kinds of common, but officially unaddressed, questions. Is it absolutely safe to put your laptop through an airport x-ray machine? How does a G4 behave when a SCSI card is malfunctioning at the hardware level? What happens if you try to make an officially unsupported graphics card work? Do third-party processor upgrades work? He explains most of these matters with stories taken from his experience as a longtime Mac user.

Second, the author knows a ton of tricks for working with the Mac OS itself, and is liberal with his recommendations of utilities for diagnosing, repairing, and adjusting its behavior. His thoughts on how to solve problems by reinstalling your operating system without wiping out your installed programs will save you time in all but the gravest situations. You'll find this book particularly valuable if you do upgrade and repair work on unfamiliar Macs. --David Wall

Topics covered: Changing and adjusting hardware on modern Macintosh computers (PowerBooks, iBooks, iMacs, Power Mac G4s, and, to a lesser extent, Power Mac G3s). All the key subsystems get attention: monitors, networks, SCSI chains, FireWire peripherals, and hard drives. Special (and especially valuable) coverage of Windows emulators and video capture hardware appears as well.