Complete Idiot's Guide to Networking Your Home

Rating:
Summary: Not that great!!!
Review: A good source for general information about home networking but it definitely lacks all the little details and the necessary information about installation. You could get the same type of information by simply consulting Microsoft help and support. Sadly, the book left me with a lot of unanswered question. I would not recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: My home will never be the same
Review: Making the technical accessible would be a theme for this book. Although erudite in detail and expansive in scope the book still reads with the ease of a comic book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book which was a surprise because I merely wanted the information it proffered. These authors made it fun and exciting to launch my home toward the future and as they point out "Judy Jetson eat your heart out."

Rating:
Summary: Complete Idiot's Guide to Networking Your Home
Review: No info re: protocol setups in the network set up. A lot of general windows 98 for dummies sort of stuff. Good security coverage. I was disappointed in realizing that X10 technology only goes so far (on, off, dim) and there's only so much you can do at this point. The stereo integration was disappointing, but I guess there's not much you can do about that. You need a tuner card to integrate TV. The ultimate will be the day which you can scan your 200 disk CD jukebox and program, burn or wake up to your favorite jam everyday. That would be nice to learn, but it wasn't covered. I think the best is yet to come, and this book is lacking simply because there's not a lot you can do with a network (yet).

Rating:
Summary: 2.5 kids and 2.5 computers...a networked home is a must!
Review: On the whole, this book is quite succinct and well written. It covers a lot of ground and because it's new, it can update the professional on the latest in connecting your home as well as serve to teach the novice about home networking.

With the advent of free PC's, the convergence of PC's and TV's and the onslaught of personal digital assistants, together with a growing number of protocols serving these devices, the underlying home networking architecture is an inevitability.

I liked the paragraph on connecting speed (P66) where the authors are trying to explain the importance of speed. They say that it " . . . doesn't just allow you to do what you would normally do faster, it allows you to do different things." You could have this as the underlying theme of the book because by networking your home you are going to be able to do what you couldn't before.

At the end of the book the authors share their vision of the future home. I particularly agree with a few of their statements: " . . . the average homebuyer will be far less tolerant than corporate network administrators." (P. 260) and "The line between home and office will continue to blur in the next millenium. In many cases, the technical capabilities of home offices will exceed those of corporate offices." (P. 262)

One thing they didn't stress was the effect home networking will have on those living in isolated regions. In fact, in generations to come, these country folk will end up with some better services than the rest of us.

Rating:
Summary: Complete Idiot's Guide to Networking Your Home
Review: This book is useless. Don't buy it. The book doesn't tell you in any detail at all about home networking. It tell's you what you can do with your computer, like adding security system to your computer, connecting the tv to the computer and stuff like that but no about networking. NO WONDER IS SO CHEAP. The book didn't help me out during my installation of my network. To fix the all the problems that I was having with the network,I went to a couple of web site that tell you how to network your computers, from troubleshooting to internet sharing connection.

Rating:
Summary: out of date and poorly organized
Review: This book was helpful to me, in contrast to what the other negative reviewers have said, but I probably could have gotten the same info from the Microsoft online help if I had looked there. I was appalled at how outdated this book was when I got it 2 years ago (Summer 2000). The advances in home networking hardware were significant and just not mentioned in this book. I have an auto-sensing switch - a choice you would never come to from this book.

The book has two authors, but either they didn't talk to eachother or there were many others involved that didn't get cover credit. There is one place where they talk about filling in the identification tab of your network applet, but it's many pages later where they tell you how to make sure that the identification tab will actually be there to fill in! At the end of one chapter there is a quick overview of why you should do backups, but they don't bother to mention that there is a whole chapter devoted to backups later in the book!!!

Finally, one big personal complaint: can all the stupid humor! Every chapter and section has to be humorous somehow, but this is at the cost of being clear and informative to the reader. I may be an "idiot", so don't confuse me with titles like "Sunny and share".