PC Annoyances could save Microsoft staff lives

I MET Steve Bass at a Via event last Comdex. Actually, I met his editor first, he was off doing something that was more fun than talking to hacks, like possibly removing his fingernails with pliers. When he came back, he was telling me about this wonderful new book he wrote called PC Annoyances.

Here is a tip to the authors and editors out there, don't give people books that they will have to carry around with them on the road. Books are heavy, and journalists are usually either way out of shape, or gangly little things that blow away in the wind.

They agreed to send me a copy, and when I got it, it sat there for several weeks in an O'Reilly envelope, black and white line drawing on the label like all their books. My mistake was not opening it and reading it sooner. It is a good, easy read, one that you can pick up, read for five minutes, and put down. If you are not the reading type, it is well indexed, so you can find out what you need fairly quickly.

PC Annoyances is about all those stupid little things in the PC world that pee you off. You know, those little details which drive you crazy, and you can never figure out how to turn on, turn off, or outright banish. Many of those little things that make you want to buy a pickup, drive to Redmond, and mow down the stupid people with a shotgun. Before you don the NRA bandana, read this book. Many of those happy little things will go away.

The book itself covers Windows and various common programs that most people use. Each chapter is broken up into topics like e-mail, windows, office, and the web. There is some crossover, but for the most part, things are where you would expect them to be. If not, there is that index in the back, and a really comprehensive chapter list in front. If you can use a mouse, finding the info you need is well within your mental capabilities.

It covers topics like how to get the quicklaunch bar back in XP, how to stop Word from 'correcting' words that were right in the first place, and just about everything else you can think of. Since I design networks and maintain PCs for my 'day job', I didn't think there was anything this book could teach me. I was wrong.

There are some things so obscure that you need registry hacks to make them work, and some errors that are so rare I had never even heard of them. On the other hand there are tons of things that drive most users up the $#*&^# wall, but are the way MS wants you to work, so no knowledgebase entries to save you.

About half the book consists of fixes like this, and the other half is little programs that will make your life better. Many topics are bitches about how stupid the Microsoft programmers were, and how there is a little shareware program to make the problem go away. There are liberal links scattered through the book, and a really nice catalogue of the software at the book's website. If there is not a cure for what maddens you, one of these programs will most likely work around the problem.

Overall, this book is well worth buying. At $20, it is fairly inexpensive, and is packed with things that will make your life less, well, annoying. If you don't have the time to sit down and read it, take the author's advice and put it in your bathroom. The only problem there is you may find yourself reading until your legs fall asleep.

As an aside, Mr. Bass was signing book plates at Comdex. He signed one to me, and gave me another one with nothing more than a signature. As of now, I am still deciding whether it should say "I will hunt you down and eat your eyes, Love, ", or "I do a killer Liza Minelli impression after a six-pack, ". Any better ideas people? µ

L'INQ
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