The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Windows 98 "to go" Major Keary majkeary@netspace.com.au

Prentice Hall publishes a to go series; the fast food analogy is appropriate, each title representing a collection of ready-to-go advice.

Windows 98 to go is not an introduction for beginners, but a concise reference for those who want to solve problems, make things work better, find work-arounds, and generally speed things up. The back cover says, "Practical, distilled, expert advice"; it is certainly practical and the information is brief and to the point. Most Windows users would, I am sure, consider "expert" to be a reasonable description of the book's tips, advice, and other information.

Chapters cover installing hardware (including dual monitors, understanding device manager, using hardware profiles, and power management); disk management (creating boot disks and startup disks, virtual memory, caching, FAT 16/32, scanning and defragmenting hard disks, and pardoning); customising the desktop; managing files and folders; Internet connections (configuring dial-up, modems, server types, trouble-shooting dial-up networking, and using multilink); remote access; setting up a Web server; networking basics; installing and using TCP/IP; and network clients.

The discussion of multilinking is interesting but, as the author points out, not all ISPs offer the facility. It is a system whereby more bandwidth can be achieved by using two modems simultaneously. Multilink was designed for ISDN connections but, according to the author, works with two 33.6 modems. There are detailed instructions for implementation.

A fair bit of space is given to screen shots; I am a bit wary about that kind of thing, but in this case it does convey visual information that users are likely to find useful. The networking sections are helpful, particularly for those who haven't had much experience in that area.

Well worth having as a supplement to the regular guides to Win98. Each process is described step-by-step, and there are plenty of side comments.

Reprinted from the July 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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