Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks, 2nd Edition

Rating:
Summary: Gives you a less annoying XP
Review: Isn't that a neat picture on the cover? Certainly grabs one's attention.

Possibly the most complaints about Microsoft Windows XP come not from Mac or linux users, but from some long suffering Microsoft users themselves. Karp hopes to alleviate some of these complaints in this updated book.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the book is the space devoted to dealing with Service Pack 2 issues. Remember that SP2 is meant to fix many bugs. And indeed it does. But in the process, it changed various system settings so that, for example, some of your network applications might now seemingly break. Karp explains that it was because SP2 was doing its job and tightened up the Microsoft Windows Firewall. So he shows how to tweak the latter to re-enable your applications.

Overall, the book is very detailed. But this can be a great help if you apply one of his fixes. Since the steps he gives are explicit enough to easily follow. Realistically, this second edition is unlikely to be the last. The next version of XP is bound to generate annoyances of its own.