Rating: 
Summary: Very Useful, Excellent Value
Review: I've seen quite a few reviews on bioinformatics books, and I think it's important to mention that this book is NOT for those people who really know their way around bioinformatics. It's NOT for people who have a pretty good idea WHY they're doing bioinformatics. These people usually know what they want to do, whether it's molecular phylogenetics, or developing search algorithm software....... whatever. They have a better feel for the field (which is a diverse one, by the way), and have high, sometimes arrogant, expectations of any book that deals with bioinformatics because they are always on the lookout for specific answers to their specific questions. They want books like Pierre Baldi's or the (in)famous Durbin textbook on sequence analysis algorithms, books which for the most part, are pretty damn inaccessible at first and downright scary to look at to people like myself who want to familiarise with bioinformatics and see what all the hype is about. Those are NOT texts to check out if you are totally new to all this. Now for people who don't really know anything significant about the field and, who for all intensive purposes, are generally CLUELESS about what it deals with in particular, like myself before I bought this book, it's worth buying this text to get an excellent intro on what bioinformatics is all about, and the kind of biological problems it addresses. The text is neither a programming bible, nor a manual on pairwise alignment techniques or RNA structure/function prediction. What it does do well is to give you a very good feel for what this field is about, as well as the confidence to start hitting the 'real' bioinformatics books that are aplenty out there. It will help you decide whether you are willing to do computational biology and really interested in it. It's the only book I know that does that, that can serve as a proper primer on bioinformatics. I suspect Gibas and Jambeck's book can also serve as a decent reference guide for the more seasoned bioinformaticians out there. It's a handy book and covers a little of everything, and I recommend reading it along with Attwood and Parry-Smith's introductory text, maybe following it up with Kanehisa's Post-Genome Informatics (2000). In any case, finally somebody came up with a book explaining the field that's actually from Planet Earth. It's very accessible, reasonably priced, and for that I am grateful to the authors.
Rating:
Summary: Good for Starters
Review: If you are from a non-computer background and intend to plunge head on to Bioinformatics, this is the best book to start with. I found it quite useful. The Bioinformatics Workstation and Tools for Bioinformatics sections are lucid and very helpful. For all you guys contemplating on a change of your career, do read the first section. You can scale yourself and think about acquiring the necessary skills required.Overall, a good book for all the graduate students majoring in Bioinformatics and allied fields.
Rating: 
Summary: Very bad title
Review: It is a cardinal sin to tack an inaccurate title to a piece scientific writing, but that's what happened here. The title "Bioinformatics Computer Skills" seems to imply that the book will teach *skills.* It would be better titled "Bioinformatics Computer Resources," and it does a pretty good job of trying to describe the areas where IT and biology overlap, although that is a vast undertaking for a slim book. And this book does not replace any standard reference in either field. For the programmer, this book will steer them towards major resources for bioinformatics. For the biologist, there are thumbnail descriptions of important programming tools, minus the IT handwaving argle-bargle. But in no sense does it build "skills." There's not enough biology here to benefit a programmer, and there's not enough IT to benefit a biologist. This book will not prepare either a biolist or programmer to do even simple tasks.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book For Exploring the Bioinformatics Field
Review: It's no deep secret many Information Technology (IT) professionals today are facing a rough road finding gainful employment. In fact, according to Information Week, nearly 10% of the US IT workforce vanished in the last two months of 2002. More aptly put, some 272,530 American IT professionals in October were unemployed by December. This data is corroborated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Where did they all go? Many almost certainly got jobs in other professions and many still could be seeking employment. Employment counselors are encouraging IT professionals to "repurpose" those hard earned tech skills. Bioinformatics is a ripe apple waiting to be eaten. Bioinformatics simply stated is the computational and analytical methods to biological problems. If this sounds like an open ended explanation, it is. In fact, according to O'Reilly's definitive publication on the topic, "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills" by Cynthia Gibas and Per Jambeck, there are several different definitions to Bioinformatics, but suffice to say all revolve around applying IT to the management of biological data. Chapters one through six delineate the basics including the typical and common software and hardware requirements for Bioinformatics. I will tell you right now if you want to be successful in this fresh field, you must learn Unix. The book points out why. Unix is used extensively in universities and academia where the abundance of software for scientific data analysis is developed. Not to mention in the mid nineties, the only workstations able to visualize protein data structure in real-time were Silicon Graphics and Sun Unix workstations. Linux fans rejoice! As the book points out, "Linux is an excellent platform for developing software, so there's a rich library of tools available for computational biology and research in general." Sound interesting? At this point you could be overwhelmed and ask yourself, "Where do I start?" Well, you may want to purchase O'Reilly's "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills" to see what the fuss is all about, determine whether you have what it takes to succeed in this new field, and most importantly, get an introduction to the software tools for biological applications from the inside out. Bioinformatics is a growing field that will continue for the unforeseeable future. If you're serious about turning around that stagnant IT career and expanding your education, you may find yourself in the same enviable position you were three years ago...needed and wanted! But don't let me mislead you. As the book points out, Bioinformatics is first and foremost a biological science.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful for individuals migrating from structured systems
Review: Most biological scientists are comfortable in Windows-based environments (Mac or Wintel) and can migrate from one to the other. They are also happy on the web. However, they aren't happy in the world of command lines and Unix text-based files and they certainly aren't happy if they actually have to interrogate datasets directly.
This book does a fairly good job of explaining the basics of a lot of the fundamental computer issues and puts them in a biomolecular context. It also is quite broad in scope and so covers things that I certainly wasn't aware of, even though I would consider myself to have been involved in bioinfomatics for about 15 years.
It is enjoyable as a refresher, as a starting point or just as something to broaden your horizons with. It will point you in the right direction to do what the title says, but it is certainly not the only book you will need!
Rating:
Summary: Rating depends on what you purpose is
Review: My purpose in ordering this book is to see if I can make the transision into this new field. From that perspective, I would rank this book 5 stars. It really satisfied my need to understand what is required to make the leap into this area. This book is a real broad swatch of all the different skills that one needs to know to assume a basic competency in bioinformatics. On page 14, they actually list core essential skills and "nice to have skills". molecular biology, Unix, Perl, algorithms, major biology software packages are all on the essential core list. The auuthors really take the viewpoint on here is how to set your computer up (on a budget!), web sites to go to and so on. Not knowing Unix and not having it currently on my computer made the two Unix/Linux chapters academic. The book is great from the perspective of seeing the big picture. Where it falls down is in the depth department. "Predicting Protein Structure and Function from Sequence" is covered in 35 pages! It is impossible to understand this subject in 35 pages - yet the authors conveyed a sense of the subject and how it fits into a larger picture. If you are familiar with the subject and want in depth treatment, this is not the book. if you want an introduction "big picture" book this could serve your needs.
Rating: 
Summary: Brief coverage of many topics
Review: No indepth analysis in the topics presented. But this book could be really useful for those people who would like a quick review of many topics overnight for an interview or so. Not good for solid understanding of the theory behind. I think "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills" is a too vague title for the book. it is more about getting to know what is in there than any "development". It's good to have the book though not essential.
Rating:
Summary: Is Bioinformatics sufficiently introduced ?
Review: Not a bad introductory book. But did not cater to all my expectations. The style of writing is impressive in a sense, not obscured by lot of scientific jargon. However many of important concepts were glossed over and made to appear over simplistic. Readers may be misled by wrong title. Other than introductory chapters on unix/perl hacks there isn'tmuch in computer skills to be gained. Biologist who want to learn about introductory bioinformatics may be satisfied but definitely I think one needs more "introductory computer skills" than what is stated in the book and of course deeper understanding of algorithms/bioinformatics methods! Some of the works were not even properly referenced. For example the chapter on protein modeling metions "allergen modeling" as a recent acheivement without any reference to scientific journal. She must have included some interesting biological case studies towards the end of the chapter, that may have helped beginners to appreciate the knowledge gained thorough the book. Any way good place to begin! Nothing is better than something....
Rating:
Summary: Very simplistic book.
Review: The book is at a level of a magazine article overview, just longer. With some editing it probably could have made it into a magazine.
Rating: 
Summary: Everything is so superficial!
Review: This book deals about everything but bioinformatics. You need to know far more biology than computing to do this. Just fire up the biology workbench ... with the biology student workbench ... and see! These are free web sites sand tools so most of the material in this book is irrelevant.
| 
