Windows XP Hacks, Second Edition

The first name we tend to think about books about doing things with computers is O'Reilly and Associates and their popular In A Nutshell, Learning, Programing, and Hacks series of books.The Hacks series is supposed to be more or less about things you can do using a programming language, software product, or hardware.Sadly, Windows XP Hacks does not live up to that standard. The only major hack that still seems relevant in this book is using the TweakUI program. Since Microsoft has discontinued it's Microsoft XP Plus! package, several of the examples could no longer be done. A real bummer considering my Netbook runs XP.Vista and 7 users will find no use for this book. (As if Vista or 7 have any real use to start with in a world where XP is still king.)Examples for how to do stuff with Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer make the book misleading. This book should be about Windows XP not Microsoft Outlook, Explorer or Office. (Put that in a separate book. (Oops! I forgot, they already are! See Word Hacks and Excel Hacks. (I highly recommend Excel Hacks if you want to learn some of the more finer points of Excel, but that's for another review.)))I am glad that the Second Edition made a couple of mentions of Firefox, but Firefox was new software at that time and Firefox Hacks didn't come out until after this book. So really this book was written for Windows users circa 2004 rather than 2010. (Generally, when an O'Reilly title is released, it has a shelf life of about 5 to 7 years before it is time for a new revised edition is published.)Even though Vista and 7 are now on the market, the author should really go back and write something for the Netbook users who buy a Netbook with Windows XP SP3.There are better books out there than this one. Hacking Windows XP by Steve Sinchack is one of them. (That one had been around since 2004 when SP2 just came out and still has relevance for SP3.) I would suggest buying that over this book.This is one O'Reilly that should probably be avoided.

This book would be great for somebody that just wants too learn about windows xp. I only gave it four stars because it is outdated. I would recomend this book if you are planning on using or are using win xp. It will help you get the most of it, but be carefull some of the info is only good for sp1 not sp2 or 3, and you could cause problems. Just as you always should set a restore point before doing anything and you should be just fine, enjoy.

Lot of usefull tricks I'm still enjoying it Good if you have two computers on a KVM so you can play a-round an see cause and effect

Outdated now. Very informative then.

Professionals already knew the bulk of these tips (not hacks) and the jist of all of them is to modify your XP visually.For real hacks go look up Irongeek

This is a great book for someone like myself who doesn't need a intro level book explaining how to open folders and send E-mail but is not an XP expert. The chapters on editing the registry and debugging local networks are worth the price of the book.

Not all is useful to me - but what I didn't need might be useful to you.

I got what I ordered and in good shape. It took a while but I guess that is book rate