Monday, June 30, 2003		Book Review

The book is written by Guy Hart-Davis who specialises in Microsoft’s Windows XP, Microsoft Office and Visual Basic. Windows XP Professional is the latest operating system by Microsoft. It has been programmed keeping in consideration the needs of big and small business offices and other institutes like corporations, big organisations and small companies. Basically this operating system is designed for businesses of all sizes.

Like its predecessors, MS Windows ’95, Windows ’98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and more, Windows XP professional is also user-friendly. It is a combination of stability and good performance, is easy to use and has streamlined user interface that makes it faster than earlier Windows OS. The key features of Windows XP Professional are reliability, high performance, security and easy usability.

The book is divided into seven parts and each part has a different topic discussed under it. Seven main topics are further divided into 43 chapters, which describes the features and usage of Windows XP Professional.

The first part of the book is installing, configuring and customising. As the name suggests, all aspects of installation of Windows XP professional, its configuration with other hardware and software, booting system, start up and shutdown and tuning operating system for optimum performance, are discussed.

In the first chapter the writer explains the features, benefits and uses of Windows XP Professional. This chapter also covers the comparative study of benefits of Windows XP Professional over previous desktop versions of Windows like Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT 4 Workstation, Windows 9x and Windows XP. It explains the uses of Windows XP Professional in corporate, roaming, SOHO and stand-alone. After the introduction of Windows XP Professional in the first chapter, the second chapter explains how to install the operating system. This chapter discusses the method of three types of installation namely upgrade installation, new installation and clean installation.

The book explains everything about Windows XP Professional in the following chapters. The second part of the book explains the working and communicating part of operating system, which includes the logging on process, running applications, printing, sending and receiving fax, media player, chat, audio and video conferencing, and application sharing. Other important topics discussed are security features of operating system, backup, recovery, use of operating system in LAN, remote network connectivity, use of Internet effectively, configuring messengers, limitations of messenger and Net meeting, security backup and disaster recovery, protecting data with encrypting file system, using Windows XP Professional on a notebook PC, power management options for laptops, managing and automating the Windows XP Professional.

At many places, graphics have been used to explain the things in an easy manner. Summary has been written after every chapter. Errors and troubleshooting are the topics explained in various chapters to make the reader aware of detecting an error and rectifying them. Many technical terms, like TCP/IP, ASR (Automated System Recovery), EFS (Encrypting File System), Remote Assistance, Internet Service Provider, Firewall and Proxy Server etc, are explained very well in the book. The only problem is that the writer has written the book assuming that the reader is already using Windows XP Professional. Though the book explains everything very clearly and even a new computer user can understand the basic of operating system yet in order understand the operating system completely and to get the full benefit of the book one should install the operating system and try the things explained in the book.