My excuse is that this is only moderately geeky. I put my hands on a book that is the subject of this post for the first time today. Since Windows 7 is going on more and more computers here in America’s Third World County (and a surprising number of folks are buying new computers with Windows 7 already onboard), I figured I’d take a look at one of the better-rated (OK, I just saw it mentioned in a few columns) tutorial books to see what was what. After all, my use of the OS has led me to think of it as something no one really needs training for, so surely this must be chock full of deep, dark mojo.
Nah. The book? Windows 7 Step By Step. My first take? This is a book for folks who still ride bikes with training wheels. Seriously. Like something one would write for those rare disaffected Mac users trying out this “Windoze thang”.
And right off the bat, it tries to pitch folks on buying new hardware with comments like, “If your existing computer runs Windows XP, it might be able to run Windows 7, but it likely won’t support Aero.”
Well, pardon me, but I’ve installed Win7 for folks on aging XP computers running on integrated graphics chipsets that use system memory in place of video memory and not had a problem with Aero yet. Perhaps if one digs back to some nine-year-old Xp computers that can’t handle more than 512MB of system memory, with onboard graphics only, well, sure they’ll not handle Aero, but Microsoft specifically disclaims the idea of attempting to run Win7 on less than 1GB of system memory, anyway.
Nah. This book is for people who’ve never used a computer–let alone a Windows computer–before in their lives. It’s what you might give to Great Aunt Sadie, if you were to give her a Windows computer (when you could give her a perfectly good computer running a free OS instead. After all, she’s probably only going to use it, if she can master the concept at all, for email and web browsing and a few other uncomplicated things.).
Pass. Glad I decided to check it out of the library instead of buying it. *heh*