Expecting Stephen Bigelow to once again produce a book that should be required reading for all technicians of all skill levels is becoming status quo. Once again the author has put together 2,000 pages packed with information that not only helps with the A+ exam but also the CST exams.
From monitors, operating system and boot processes, tape backups, batteries, the BIOS and buses to CD-rom technologies, chipsets, CMOS, troubleshooting, data recovery, RAID and DVD you have only covered 600 pages.
Along with those topics comes Error Codes, cooling devices, floppy technologies, hard drives, gaming, keyboards, memory and this gets you to page 1065. From there you move to mice, modems, 300 pages of troubleshooting techniques covering over 2000 problems and solutions.
Wrapping all this up are chapters for sound cards, SCSI and preventative maintenance. The cd-rom included has over 100 shareware and demo programs to try out. There is also 10 additional chapters on the cdrom not in the book covering topics like USB, touchpads and virus software.
This book is also good for aspiring technicians, presenting exhaustive (but not overwhelming) coverage of topics you are sure to see on the A+ or CST exams. The author is kind enough to include useful diagrams and historical tidbits throughout the work, making the arcane comprehensible and the boring bearable. How many computer books can you think of that accomplish such a feat?
Mr. Bigelow, if you're reading this, I would like to thank you for producing such a wonderful book. Suggesting it to others is the least I can do.
Voila! Help at last.
Information is thorough and easy to find. Fixes work.
If you HAVE to have a PC and you run into problems, this is the book to have.