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April 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Book Review: Windows Vista, The Missing Manual

I looked at the table of contents inside David Pogue's Windows Vista, The Missing Manual and thought I was going to pan it. I see a title containing a phrase like 'Missing Manual' and for some reason I think it's going to contain secret hacker-style Easter egg sort of things that geeks like me love. But read only the Table of Contents and all you see are explanations of all the obvious stuff that nerds already know. Things like operating the file system, right-clicking operations, printer installation, security settings, etc. etc. et nauseum cetera.

But don't close it based on the chapter headings. Start reading through it. Okay, it's still not for someone like me. But being this is a blog on SMB topics, this book very much is for someone on your SMB staff. Most likely several someones--usually those people who don't wear propeller beanies, never heard of gnome illusionists and have social lives. Pogue's Missing Manual does a real good job walking those folks through a potentially nerve wracking Vista move.

True, I wish it were smaller for those people, but there are ways around that. Generally, you show them a book this size and they start sniffling like Dumbo rubbing trunks with his Mom. But you don't have to make them read all of it. Skim the work and put together a syllabus for the average biz users in your group.

If it were me, I'd have them read chapters 1-3. Get them through that and they're generally good to go as long as you've got an IT guy around to do the setup, backup and similar back-end tasks for them. Lots of Web work and more reliance on bundled apps means they should also read chapters 7 & 11. After that, day-to-day non-nerd users are generally okay.

What's nice about this book is that it's got an accessible, tutorial writing style. Clear, non-geeky and intellectually padded with loads of annotated screen shots. Yeah, you can use this as a text book and teach your co-workers this stuff while they're reading it; but unless they ate a lot of lead paint chips as children, Pogue's word smithing doesn't really need a teacher's backup.

Power users can go through the other chapters in Pogue's book and get benefit, too. Especially the items on security, the new control panel features, the maintenance and disk sections and even the media sections if they're turning their home machines into TiVos.

It's not a book of hidden hacks and ways to make Vista do things only a hobbit could love, but Windows Vista, The Missing Manual is a solid primer for the new OS. Well written and clear to boot. Recommended as long as you're a member of the appropriate audience.

Posted by Oliver Rist on April 30, 2007 11:05 AM

March 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Book Review: Knoppix Hacks

O'Reilly sent me Kyle Rankin's updated Knoppix Hacks late last year, and I was remiss in reading it...until the ThinkPad did its much-moaned-about face plant. Soon as I could get it to accept some electrical power, it was the latest Knoppix distro I turned to for an OS interface.

Now you can just stick a Knoppix CD into most any PC and expect to get a Linux prompt...eventually; and getting to files on the hard disk from there is pretty easy as well. But sticking to those features alone is selling the Knoppix distro a little short.

That CD (or DVD now, if you prefer) is actually crammed full of additional tools (everything from programming IDEs to diagnostic and recovery tools) and a number of features that are semi-unique to Knoppix and its typical CD-based operating environment.

Knoppix Hacks does a great job of describing all these tools in user scenarios. Stuff like: "How to Recover a Windows Password" or "How to Recover Files on a Damaged Hard Disk." It's an easy-to-digest way of learning Knoppix as you use it to perform actual functions. Much better than the usual Linux learning method that starts off with Linus' elementary school years and then wants to tell you how find the Start button.

But what's especially useful is all the stuff aimed at making your Knoppix CD more than just a once-in-a-while boot. Rankin has a number of chapters on increasing Knoppix performance (yes, OS-off-CD can be damn slow), fine-tuning a permanent disk partition, accessing USB peripherals and similar features that can allow you to use Knoppix as a permanent Linux environment.

It's still subject to the usual Linux desktop limitations, but for recycling older PCs it's great. Also great for teaching yourself to live in Linux without having to commit to a permanent partition, or even endangering your standard operating system.

The O'Reilly site link above has a bunch of information on this book, including a few chapters available for free as PDFs. I've dropped a couple of them below in case you want to check them out, though you'll need Acrobat to do it.

Hack 5: Free Your CD to Make Knoppix Run Faster
Hack 40: Create an Emergency Router

Posted by Oliver Rist on March 2, 2006 12:42 PM

February 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Book Review: Get Ready for Monad

O'Reilly was kind enough to send me a review copy of Monad by Andy Oakley. (Who I'm dying to ask whether the kids called him Annie Oakley in school--and before y'all start flaming, read my name. I could form a teenage-based misanthrope support group.) You can also check it out on Amazon.

The first thing you notice about the book is the giant bullfrog on the cover. If you're drinking scotch when you first see this, it's likely to delay you're actually opening the book as you contemplate what connection there is between a bullfrog and a command line scripting language.

But when you pry open your hangover-encrusted eyes the following morning and crack the cover because it's too painful to do anything else, you'll get a pretty good primer on the Monad command shell.

An important note, however: This is not Monad for Complete Beginning Monkey Brains Who've Never Scripted Anything. Mr. Oakley does assume you're competent with Windows scripting syntax prior to reading his work--which is why he can fit it into such an easily digestible format. On the upside, you don't need to be a scripting wizard, just don't be clueless. I script something once a year--tops--and I had no trouble following along.

I wish there had been more examples of how to use Monad with all the new Monad-supporting server products (like ISA 2006, Exchange 12, etc.), but since Microsoft hasn't released any of those products yet, you can't fault Oakley for that. Probably look for that in the 2nd edition.

Meantime: If you're a semi-experienced Windows scripter looking to get ready for Monad, this is the book for you.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 21, 2006 08:53 AM

December 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Just Say No to "Just Say No..."

I shouldn't be reading a book like Just Say No to Microsoft by Tony Bove from No Starch Press. Usually, No Starch does pretty well by me. Their Linux for normal users series (including Linux Made Easy and Linux for Non-Geeks) is informative and those books are well written and instructive. Their advanced books like TCP/IP Guide, Write Great Code and the soon-to-be-reviewed here Wicked Cool Java are all worthwhile reads.

"Just Say No...", however, is not in this class. And, for me, it's even worse because the entire manuscript is pretty much a rehash of the whose-operating-system-is-better argument, which I consider to be one of the bigger wastes of time in the geek world. We've all gotten fed up with Redmond and written a die-Redmond-die rant; but I never extended one of mine into a book nor tried to get people to pay $25 to read it.

To be fair, the book wasn't written for me or anyone in IT. It seems written mostly for folks who've already made the no-MS jump and are looking for justification. Mostly political at that. For those who haven't, Mr. Bove concentrates on single users, power users, and PC enthusiast-types.

He makes some effort to talk to business users, but he glosses over the same issue that all these arguments gloss over: Real life. Even if I'd read the book from a PC enthusiast angle and reviewed it on a site like Technology Filter, I'd still have panned it because it's all the easy, and in many ways pointless, anti-Microsoft fluff. All the insulated and largely acedemic nerd arguments that just don't fly in the real world.

Mr. Bove: Microsoft isn't number 1 because Bill Gates is sitting in a high-tech office lair, stroking a white cat and surrounded by sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads. Nor are you Austin Powers for jumping to the Mac. Microsoft is number 1 because vast numbers of third-party software applications still run only on Windows.

If you're running a real estate management company, for example, one of the best dedicated accounting packages for this vertical is Intuit's MRI. Which runs only on Windows. If you want MRI, you want Windows. End of story. You can talk yourself blue explaining how great Linux is when compared to Windows and the owner of this company will just keep looking at his watch. You're not talking about anything that makes a difference in his life. And there are hundreds of examples like this across all kinds of verticals.

If you're a home gaming enthusiast, you're in the same boat. Games don't look much different on OSX or Linux, nor do they really run better. There are simply far fewer games for these OSes, so Windows winds up number 1. Sad, wrong, whatever, but real. Blame Microsoft or blame the Linux programming culture which is only now coming out with games that even remotely compare to mainstream desktop OSes?

Mr. Bove ignores this issue. Instead he rehashes the same stuff that the Linux desktop guys have been talking up for years. They have everything Microsoft does and a little bit more: a fast OS that's also stable, a productivity suite that's also full-featured and entertainment apps and Web browsers that do everything their Windows counterparts do except better and more securely.

And if all you need in life is a single-user instance of OpenOffice, XMMS and Firefox, then more power to you. But that's not an argument that IT guys, business owners or even many enthusiasts want to hear anymore. To them, technology is a tool box; an OS is a hammer, an IT guy a construction worker. They don't want to sit and read 231 pages of why the IT guy shouldn't use a steel handled hammer, but a wood handled one. They want you to shut up, pick up the GD hammer, grab a nail and build them the house they've been waiting for.

Mr. Bove does comment on the growing success of open source. But he does it in such a one-sided tone, that the same FUD he blames Microsoft for winds up obscuring his own work. PowerPoint even partially at fault for the 2003 NASA shuttle crash? Are you kidding me? Don't do that. Scenarios on how Active Directory could be used to hose down a Microsoft network? Don't do that either.

The people who know PowerPoint, know that if there was a bad PowerPoint slide you blame the author not the program. (Especially if two pages later you're crowing about Impress, which was engineered to be a PowerPoint clone.) The folks who know AD also know LDAP which in one form or other is embedded in every enterprise Linux server distro and can be used for good or evil as can any directory if a black hat gets access.

You want to win the hearts and minds of the Microsoft set, give them clear examples. Show an MRI user, for example, that he can download a full open source ERP application today and start customizing to get the same feature set. Admit that not every open source app is as clean as commercial Windows-centric ones. Show him how to get around that, or pick out the best ones for concentration.

Show him how to customize open source code without making some bearded Penguin guru rich with fees that wind up costing more than MRI would have in the first place. Show him how to train his users so they don't freak out when they see a Unix file path. Show a Sharepoint user how to mirror that functionality with a standard Web server, XML and intranet concepts--without breaking the budget or freezing production for months while waiting for programmers.

None of this is easy, and none of it applies to every situation. Maybe make that point, too.

Something. Anything except 231 pages of "I hate Microsoft and you should, too."

Posted by Oliver Rist on December 8, 2005 03:01 PM

September 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Cisco on SMB

Think Cisco is only interested in big honking enterprises? Hell no. Too much money in SMB to ignore the market. If you want an in-depth look at how Cisco views the SMB market, check out the not-so-new Cisco Press Book, Power Up Your Small-Medium Business: A Guide to Enabling Network Technologies (Robyn Aber, 2004, Cisco Press, ISBN: 1-58705-135-4).

If you can get past the title without passing out, you'll find the book is written for a general biz executive audience that only assumes you're familiar with computers and have a basic understanding of the main elements of a network (client, file server, switch, etc.).

It's a pretty informative read, not only for its intended purpose of educating readers on SMB networking issues and possibilities, but also on showing you how Cisco views this space. Worth checking out, and not just if you drank too much espresso and can't sleep.

Posted by Oliver Rist on September 15, 2005 10:32 PM

September 07, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Linux Made Easy

Maybe you're interested in trying a Linux Desktop in your business. But perhaps you're still a mite intimidated by the ferocious Penguin command line monster, a vicious slavering beast who keeps uttering cryptic cries like crimsongoatee% gzip -1 smbitblog.txt.gz.

Well don't fret, pet. The good folks at No Starch Press have just released the tome for you: Linux Made Easy (Rickford Grant, No Starch Press, 2005; ISBN:1-59327-057-7). And it is.

Only caveat here is that one of the chief reasons it's easy is because Mr. Grant is concentratig solely on the Xandros distribution (there's even a publishers version of the OS included with the book). Xandros is definitely one of the easiest Linux distros on the planet, and Grant stays mostly in the GUI (Windows-like) environment. You don't bump into too many command line conundrums.

But for small businesses, especially those looking to save some money with a cheaper Windows replacement, that's exactly what they're looking for. If you whip through this book and want to dig into the guts of the Penguin a little deeper, then Grant throws some advanced stuff at you in the back and No Starch has a whole library of propeller head books awaiting you.

Meantime, Linux Made Easy is a great way to get installed and get comfortable using Linux in everyday life.

Posted by Oliver Rist on September 7, 2005 09:42 AM

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