Rating: 
Summary: Almost perfect, but it's important to know of the flaws
Review: It's an encyclopedic book, and I don't want to repeat the previous reviews, as I mostly agree with them. Just a couple of important (in my view), and unmentioned so far points to add. This book is very good for someone desiring an overview of the PC hardware, that is to learn a bit on everything. However, if you work with a particular part (which is likely -- books like that are normally bought for that precisely task, not to learn the whole thing), you will frequently find it lacking in depth and precision. Another thing: the book is huge. No, make it HUGE. It's unwieldy and impossible to handle. At the same time, a sizeable part of it deals with all goddamn processors there ever were in the i86 family! Moreover, the narration is, as it were, accumulative, that is the later chapters do not repeat info, but refer the reader back to the earlier sections dealing with earlier processors. Now, who in the world needs to know anything about 286, 386, 486 anymore?! For goodness sakes: GET RID OF THOSE CHAPTERS! Get rid of EISA! Get rid of the MCA bus! You'll need to go to some museum to find those things, in the real life all of this stuff is LONG GONE. The book needs to be re-written, that's my firm opinion, all obsolete junk removed and whatever is still applicable, moved to the later proc's chapters; start with a Pentium, trash everything else. A nice side benefit: the book will halve in size.Another serious problem: the original, clearly, is in German, so I have no beef with the authors, but! The English in the English version is appaling; a lot of stuff in the book defies comprehension. Please take note of it: if you're a newbie, you'll fry your brain. This is not a conceptual book, it's just an awful amount of purely factual information, there's nothing you can conceptualize yourself, sorta, salvaging the good info from beneath the horrific exposition. I remember struggling with it; now, rereading it I know what was actually meant in those places that I couldn't decipher at first -- because I know much more today from a million of other sources that I have dealt with since. For newbies, it'll be a torture via mumbo-jumbo. A translator of a book like that MUST know the subject matter, not only the languages, in order to render the original German text in the comprehensible English. That said, the book, as everyone agreed here, is encyclopedic and unique in its scope and diligence, so one can't go wrong in having it. Still I can't imagine this being the first or only book you have on PC hardware.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing in scope and coverage - a real brick, however.
Review: The book entails a meager 1311 pages and covers every single concept, every obscure acronym, every undocumented feature (hard to tell since if they are undocumented I can't know about them and therefore not know if there are more). Overall the book is impressive in its scope and the organization is first-rate. The contents are laid out in a modular and non-linear fashion so that one chapter doesn't neccesarily follow another, and the reader is free to skip around, referring to it when convenient. It is also a very good book to have lying around near your computer because it commands instant respect for the owner by anyone who glances at the table of contents. Buy if you are sick of not knowing what a MOSFET is or what all the gold PCI connectors do and are called.
Rating: 
Summary: it IS Indespensible.
Review: The book has saved me many hours of researching toil. I love it
Rating:
Summary: An almost complete PC bible
Review: This is the best book i've ever read. It covers almost every single importand part of the PC, and better up, it does it with great depth.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent hardware reference
Review: This is the best overall reference I've found to date on the hardware systems that make up a PC. Every subsystem is covered, presenting pertinent historical and current information. The architectural details of the various CPU families are covered, although not in as much detail as other books focused specifically on each processor family. This book does provide a great starting point for further research in these areas. 'The Indispensable PC Hardware Book' does a slightly better job covering hardware details than 'The Undocumented PC' which does a slightly better job covering information low-level software engineers need. Together, these books provide a complete reference for legacy and current PC systems.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent hardware reference
Review: This is the best overall reference I've found to date on the hardware systems that make up a PC. Every subsystem is covered, presenting pertinent historical and current information. The architectural details of the various CPU families are covered, although not in as much detail as other books focused specifically on each processor family. This book does provide a great starting point for further research in these areas. 'The Indispensable PC Hardware Book' does a slightly better job covering hardware details than 'The Undocumented PC' which does a slightly better job covering information low-level software engineers need. Together, these books provide a complete reference for legacy and current PC systems.
Rating:
Summary: If forced to write code on a desert island...
Review: This is the one book to have. It does lack detail on graphic cards (for which I recommend Richard Ferraro's book ISBN 0-201-62490-7), and the actual microprocessor, but I already have those kind of books. This is the book that fills in the gaps that other books have promised, but fell short of. This book is nearly as complete as a whole shelf of Intel databooks, and much easier to use. Never before have I found a book that explains so well the lowest levels of PC hardware. Truely indispensable.
Rating:
Summary: Good but a bit outdated now (4th edition)...
Review: With the new 4th edition, Messmer touches on most of the changes ( more details on the pentium III and it's chipset, rambus, DVDs, PCI bus etc.) that have occured in the PC world since the 3rd edition(1997). However, the updated sections are frankly a bit skimpy. The heart of the book still remains a highly detailed description of the core x86 architecture, which is invaluable.
Mueller has retained all of this material since he probably exerted a great deal of effort in writing them for the 1st edition. However, the newer material, which is equally important, lacks the same kind of depth. So the "Indispensible PC hardware book" is no longer enough on it's own. Something like Scott Mueller's "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" is needed to complement Messmer's otherwise excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Great reference
Review: You do, of course, need some extensive background on assembly language and basic knowledge computer architecture. If you have that, you'll be treated to quite a wide scope of material. This text is very clear, and the welth of information is staggering. From all Intel chips (alomst all, rather) to chipsets, to support chips to storage hardware. I have just this one book (in addition to some manuals from Intel) and I never needed any more sources. Also, if you need even more info, you can supplement the book with free manuals from Intel.
Rating:
Summary: A must
Review: You have to have this book because it contains everything you want to know about your pc's hardware and how to use it.
|
