Author: Paul McFedries
Publisher: Que Publishing (http://informit.com/que)
Published: March 2009
ISBN-10: 0-7897-3822-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-789-73822-6
Format: Soft cover, 480 pages (plus access to a free online edition for 45 days with purchase of the hard copy version of the book)
Price: $26.99
Make Windows Run Your Way
By his own admission, Paul McFedries, the author of the book, "Tweak It and Freak It: A Killer Guide to Making Windows Run Your Way", is a computer tinkerer. But more importantly, he is also a widely recognized Windows expert too, and is the author of other Windows books as well such as "Microsoft Windows Vista Unleashed, Second Edition"; "Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed"; "Microsoft Windows Vista Unveiled"; and "Networking with Microsoft Windows Vista: Your Guide to Easy and Secure Windows Vista Networking". In total, McFedries has now authored more than 60 computer books, and his popularity and acceptance as an author is proven by generating sales of more than 3 million copies of his books worldwide (for more information, consult his own personal Web site located at www.mcfedries.com). When McFedries was writing "Tweak It and Freak It: A Killer Guide to Making Windows Run Your Way", he had a specific readership in mind, namely, as he says, those "Windows users who have a gripe, a beef, or an ax to grind and are looking for ways to overcome their Windows woes and shortcomings with targeted, easy-to-implement tweaks and tune-ups." He believes too that his book will also "appeal to curious users who want to travel down different Windows roads, rebellious users who want to thumb their noses at standard-issue Windows techniques, and power users who want to get the most out of Windows." The tweaks presented in this book apply to the Windows Vista and Windows XP operating environments.
In the opening pages of his book, McFedries makes the valid point that "most people think that Windows is set in stone, but that apparently solid surface is really just a thin veneer that Microsoft slaps onto Windows to ensure that new and fumble-fingered users don't get into trouble. Strip off that veneer and a whole world comes into view, one that's eminently tweakable, moddable, hackable, customizable, and personalizable. Within this world lie tools and technologies that anyone can use to tweak and tune almost every aspect of Windows, from startup to shutdown, from the interface to the Internet, from security to scripting."
The content of "Tweak It and Freak It: A Killer Guide to Making Windows Run Your Way" has been organized into ten major parts:
1. The opening part of the book contains what McFedries refers to as "two dozen easy and essential Windows tweaks." This is where, for instance, you can find out how to boost Vista performance using a flash drive as well as how to improve readability of your screen's contents by activating ClearType in either Windows Vista or Windows XP.
2. Additional tweaks for making Windows safe and secure. A typical example from this part of the book is the tweak that applies to anyone who is concerned about unauthorized individuals viewing the contents of files that are meant to remain private. McFedries explains how to encrypt files in Windows so that the files are "completely unreadable by anyone unless the person logs on to your Windows Vista account. After you encrypt your files, you work with them exactly as you did before, with no noticeable loss of performance."
3. Maximizing the use of user accounts. This is the part of the book to turn to in order to learn how to take full advantage of the Windows Administrator account as well as how to initiate a series of password hacks.
4. Tuning Windows performance in three different ways: general performance tweaks; streamlining the Start menu; and speeding up your Web surfing.
5. Customizing the Windows interface so that, for example, you can run Windows with three or more monitors, or change the size of the blinking cursor so that it is easier to see.
6. Tweaking the different media aspects of Windows – music, photos, and video.
7. Hacking the file system. The five chapters that make up this part of the book are respectively devoted to file and folder tweaks; disk drive tweaks; super searching; better backups; and tweaks for customizing the file system. By consulting this part of the book, you should find that you soon become much more efficient in your file maintenance tasks.
8. Network tweaks that cover network security, setting up remote connections, and the use of wireless connections.
9. Program tweaks, for example, discover how to make a program think it is running under an earlier version of Windows or what's involved in shutting down hung programs automatically.
10. Detailed explanations of three different tools for tweaking Windows: 1) the Registry Editor; 2) the Group Policy Editor; and 3) scripts. In fact, the last chapter of "Tweak It and Freak It: A Killer Guide to Making Windows Run Your Way", titled "Running Scripts", is available online from the book's publisher, Que, as a sample chapter (http://informit.com/que). McFedries has written that particular chapter of his book to show his readers how they can enhance and improve Windows by unlocking the power of scripts.
McFedries used three criteria when deciding whether or not a particular tweak should be included in his book. The first criterion was that a tweak should be useful. His reasoning for this can't be challenged because, as he says, "if a hack doesn't help you get your work done, solve a problem, or make Windows more secure or reliable, it didn't make the cut." The second of McFedries's criteria was that each of his tweaks is unique. His justification for this approach is that "there are lots of Windows tweaks available on the Internet and in other books, so you certainly don't want another conglomeration of the same old Registry hacks. Instead, this book presents a fresh collection of tweaks that include many custom hacks" that McFedries himself has designed and created over the years. And the third criterion was that tweaks should be easy to understand and install. Again McFedries's reasoning on this matter is straightforward: "a tweak that takes you an hour to implement and yet saves only a few seconds a day isn't much of a tweak. This book focuses on tweaks that you can implement with a few steps, or with easy-to-understand plug-and-play scripts." The end result of McFedries's research and writing is a handy collection of tweaks that Windows XP and Vista users will find invaluable, and which have the potential to significantly alter the way in which they interact with Windows. Each of the tweaks in the book is accompanied by a number of icons that tell you whether the tweak is applicable to Windows Vista or Windows XP (or, in some cases, both operating environments) along with another icon that indicates the level of complexity of the tweak, for example, easy or medium, and therefore the sort of time that you can expect to spend in implementing that particular tweak. McFedries has also included different sorts of breakout boxes throughout the text of his book. There are "note" boxes which he uses to provide readers with additional information about, and insights into, the topic being discussed; "tip" boxes that contain details of "methods that are easier, faster or more efficient than the standard methods"; and "caution" boxes that warn you of potential problems, accidents, traps, and other common pitfalls to watch out for.
In addition to the online sample chapter of the book, there are other bonuses to be gained too by visiting the site of the book's publisher, Que (http://informit.com/que). When you do so, you are given access to an extra half a dozen online chapters that don't appear in the book itself. And best of all, you don't even have to purchase a copy of the book before you can access these chapters. This represents an ideal way of finding out whether McFedries writes books in the manner in which you like to read them. The titles of those six online chapters are as follows:
1. Device Driver Tweaks
2. Dealing with Devices
3. Creating Your Own Custom Startup
4. Customizing Windows Restarts and Shutdowns
5. Enhancing Security and Privacy at Shutdown
6. Dual-Booting Windows with Other Operating Systems
And there's one more "freebie" too in the form of an online article titled "Defragmenting the Windows Registry" that has been written by Ed Tittel (he is well-known to many IT professionals as the creator of the "Exam Cram" series of IT certification prep books).
In summing up this review, most of us spend considerable periods of time everyday dealing with Windows so it makes good sense to learn how to make Windows run the way that you want it to run. And this book can help each of us to achieve that goal.
One final point. It's likely that, as an IT professional, your duties include supporting users who each run a different version of Windows – and it could be that you already have some users, including yourself, who have now migrated to Windows 7. In that case, it is reassuring to learn that McFedries himself likes to keep ahead of the "technological pack" too and has already authored four computer books about Windows 7! The titles are "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Microsoft Windows 7"; "Microsoft Windows 7 Visual Quick Tips"; "Microsoft Windows 7 Simplified"; and "Teach Yourself VISUALLY Microsoft Windows 7" (full details of the books are available at www.mcfedries.com).