Stephen Bigelow has long been associated with hardware references, PC repair guides, and the like. He is no armchair expert, but for many years was employed as an manufacturing engineer working extensively with computer technologies before moving on to writing books and articles.

PC Hardware Annoyances is not to be confused with PC Annoyances, also published by O'Reilly and both in the same large (205 x 250 mm) format; this title focuses on hardware annoyances in a Windows XP environment and appears to be based on questions posed by users, which makes it a valuable resource for anyone considering a component upgrade. The term "hardware" is used to include peripherals such as printers and monitors. Also in the author's sights are laptops and PDAs, which have their own particular problems. Throughout there are boxed items with practical tips, warnings, and advice.

The 'annoyances' and their respective 'fixes' are grouped in chapters: Desktop; Laptop and PDA; Graphics; Sound; Hard Drive; CD/DVD Drive; Network; and Printers and Scanners.

The format makes it easy to find a particular problem. As mentioned above, the annoyances are grouped in chapters that each deal with a topic. For example, the content of the CD/DVD Drive Annoyances chapter is further broken down under headings, such as Recording Annoyances, that in turn contain specific problems. Under Recording Annoyances is a sub-heading, Lost DVD Space, which has the following annoyance: I'm writing to a 4.7 Gb DVD-R, but I only see 4.38 Gb of free space. What gives? The response explains that vendors "often use 'decimal' gigabytes to denote capacity, while software makers apply 'binary' gigabytes . [so]. there is no missing space - it's simply a different way of expressing the disc's capacity". Also explained is that about 1 Mb of the available space on a DVD is required for overheads such as track information and video title areas.

Hard Drive Annoyances contains much useful advice ranging over many issues, from managing big drives to spanning backups over multiple CDs. I was also impressed by the breadth and depth of coverage of scanning problems. As already mentioned, it is also a good upgrade guide; many of the annoyances have stemmed from situations such as , "I installed a new graphics card with a single video port, but when I configure the desktop setup in Windows, I see two displays".

This is a well-organised and comprehensive troubleshooting resource that every WinXP user should have. Highly recommended as a help-desk reference and as a library acquisition. Very good value.