Whew! That's easily the longest Moore's Views & Reviews title ever. Nominally, I'm reviewing two Mac books this week, but they're blood relations, not just because they're both written by the same author, Todd Stauffer, and both published by IDG, but also because they share a lot of the same content.

Upgrading And Fixing Macs and iMacs for Dummies is a new release, but it in many respects is a slimmed-down and updated version of Mr. Stauffer's Macworld Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible, which went to press in 1998. Either one will make a useful reference edition to the bookshelf of any Mac user with an interest in the subject matter outlined in the respective titles, or even if you just want to keep your Mac humming harmoniously in its present spec. Which book is your best choice depends upon in number of things.

First, don't be misled by the "for Dummies" categorization of the newer book. I'm not exactly a Mac newbie, and while I read a lot of Mac reference books for review (as well as for my own enjoyment and information), and often find myself re-turning of a lot of (for me) well plowed ground, I found plenty in this volume to keep me interested. Like all of the "for Dummies" titles, Upgrading And Fixing Macs And iMacs is written to be accessible to be non technically seasoned, but that doesn't mean there is nothing for Mac veterans to learn from it.

Actually, while the Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible is pitched to a broad spectrum of readership (Beginning to Advanced), I found the style of both books to be very similar -- indeed almost identical in many areas in terms of content as well as style. What I'm getting at here is that either of these books addresses a wide spectrum of reader expertise.

That said, there are some substantial differences, length being an obvious one. At 386 pages, the 2000 book is only slightly more than one-third as long as the 943 page 1998 tome. Comparing the two books is also an object lesson in just how much has changed in the Mac orbit over the past two years. The newest Mac to make into the Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible is the original, Revision A iMac, but it only receives a few token references and a photo, obviously inserted at the last minute. The PowerBook G3 Series WallStreets made the cut as well, but are listed as a non-upgradeable, which of course is no longer the case in 2000, with the new daughtercard upgrades from Newer Technology and PowerLogix available.

Speaking of PowerBooks, the older book has two whole chapters dedicated to them, while they are a virtual no-show in the "for Dummies" book, with not even one PowerBook reference in the index.

USB and FireWire get a couple pages each (out of 943) in the 1998 book, mostly introducing them as new technologies. Terms that you won't find at all in the Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible, that appear in the "for Dummies" book include: Unified Motherboard Architecture (UMA); SuperDisk drive; ViaVoice; Smart USB; SoundJam; Orb drive; PlayStation (Sony); PowerPrint; Net Boot; Open GL; OS X; MoviePlayer; MP3; MacSpeech; iPort; iREZ; iMovie (and sundry other "i" things); G4 processor; CD-RW; Altivec; AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port); and AirPort.

If you have a Mac up to and including the beige G3 machines, and inclusive of the various Mac OS clones, the Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible has plenty of useful and relevant information for you. G4 upgrades aren't mentioned of course, but the upgrade principles are generally the same. Owners of newer G3 and G4 (desktop only) Macs and iMacs will be better off with the "for Dummies" volume

If you like the customary "for Dummies" series touches, like the tear-out "Cheat Sheet" quick reference in the front of the book, you won't be disappointed.

Upgrading And Fixing Macs and iMacs for Dummies is organized in five distinct sections:

Part I, PreMed: Getting Started With Upgrades And Fixes, covers the basics of making in upgrade or fixing decision. You get an overview of Mac anatomy and are filled in on the basics of how Macs work and what might go wrong with them.

Part II, The Clinic: Operating In A And Fixing On The Outside, covers issues of upgrading that can be accomplished without opening up the Mac, such as adding new peripherals.

Part III, Advanced Surgery: Getting Inside Your Mac, gets down to the nitty gritty of how to open up your Mac for surgery such as installing more RAM, a faster processor, or a larger hard drive, as well as troubleshooting and repairing problems with these items.

Part IV, Internal Medicine And Maintenance, informs you of techniques that will help keep glitches and bugs at bay, and tells you how to deal with them if they do crop up.

Part V, The Part Of Tens, includes a smorgasbord of troubleshooting and upgrading tips, tool suggestions, and particular issues pertaining iMacs and Power Mac G3 and G4 computers.

Back in Part I, you will find an excellent tutorial on how to approach the upgrade question rationally, based on your real needs and wants in a computer. Should you upgrade your old Mac, or does it make better economic sense to put the money toward the purchase of a new machine? This is particularly relevant with the continually falling prices of new iMacs for instance. A related question addressed is whether it makes sense to fix an older broken Mac, or just replace it.

The chapter on diagnosis deals with things like hard drive fragmentation possible bottlenecks to performance, and hardware shortcomings. There is a whole chapter on Mac ports where the relative niceties of Serial, LocalTalk, ADB, SCSI, USB, and FireWire, are discussed and compared. This is worthwhile and useful information for the current, sometimes confusing, transitional period we're in, where all of these interface protocols are still in widespread use.

Chapter 5 covers keyboards, mice, other input devices, and things that might go wrong with them. Chapter 6 will tell you probably more than you ever wanted to know about the history of modems for the Mac, provides a lot of useful intelligence on modem troubleshooting and different types of Internet connections. Chapter 7 does much the same with monitors, while Chapter 8 covers scanners and digital cameras.

Chapter 9 is all about sound on your Mac, including MIDI, MP3s, QuickTime, voice recognition, and speakers. Chapter 10 covers printers and printer connections, a sometimes hair-tearing topic for beginners and veterans alike. Chapter 11 gives you the goods on removable Media such as Zip drives CDs Orbs, Magneto-Optical, tape drives, and even floppies, including a section on burning CDs. Despite having been covered in the ports chapter, USB and FireWire get another whole chapter of their own -- Chapter 12. Chapters 13 through 17 take you inside your Mac, starting with how to get inside so that you can install things like more RAM, processor upgrades, expansion cards, bigger hard drives, and other storage media.

Chapter 18 is a tutorial on basic networking, and Chapter 19 is devoted entirely to the iMac and specific of great issues pertaining to get.

Chapter 20 is a diagnostic and troubleshooting guide to the Mac OS and other software applications, a general topic carried over into Chapters 21 and 22. Chapter 23 describes 10 specific problems and how to fix them, while Chapter 24 reviews came helpful utilities for troubleshooting and repairing Mac software problems. Chapter 25 outlines and special iMac and Power Mac G3 and G4 fixes.

Comparing the two books, it is evident that pretty much the same outline structure was used for both, and indeed, as I've mentioned previously, there is a great deal of common content. However, the MacWorld Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible contains a lot more information and detail, particularly on some topics. The outlines are so much the same, that it would be redundant to include a separate chapter review here for the 1998 book, except to note again that the essential cutoff in this case is with the beige G3 desktop Macs, and that there are chapters in the Upgrade And Repair Bible on multimedia and gaming, dealing with DOS and Windows PCs, the aforementioned PowerBook chapters -- topics not really addressed in the "for Dummies" book. Also, as a UMAX SuperMac owner, I noticed that there was almost no mention of Mac clones in the 2000 book, even in charts and graphs (of which there are many in both books).

Part of the reason for the older book's higher page count is that it is much more lavishly illustrated with photographs then the newer, less expensive volume. The latter has fewer illustrations overall, and the ones that are included are more likely to be screen shots or line art rather than photographic plates. On the other hand, Upgrading And Fixing Macs and iMacs for Dummies has cartoons, which the bigger book doesn't.

The MacWorld Upgrade And Repair Bible also contains a bundled CD-ROM containing antiquated versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and a grab bag of software demos in shareware, some of them still quite useful, but most now woefully outdated, as is the whole CD with a book concept in this Internet-oriented era . Fewer and fewer Mac books are shipping with bundled CDs, especially general reference volumes like this one. The "for Dummies" book has no CD, and you don't miss it.

For most of us, I would rate Upgrading And Fixing Macs and iMacs for Dummies as a substantially better value at $19.99 then the Mac Upgrade And Repair Bible is at $39.99. In fact, I think I would make that evaluation even if the two books were both up to date chronologically. The "for Dummies" book is a more accessible and readable format, but still manages to treat the topics covered thoroughly. I highly recommend this book as being well worth what it costs.

That is not to cast aspersions on the bigger, 1998 volume. There is just a ton of useful and helpful information in this book. It's not something that you are likely to sit down and read for pleasure unless you are a complete Mac tech-junkie, but it is a fine reference and troubleshooting guide for owners of older Macs, especially those with a serious interest in upgrading their machines. And of course, it addresses several topics, like PowerBooks, that are passed over by the "for Dummies" book. My only caveat in recommending it is the hefty price for what is now a two year-old reference. Still, as I've observed, an amazing amount of its contents have been transplanted essentially verbatim into the newer book.

Upgrading and Fixing Macs and iMacs For Dummies
By Todd Stauffer
Pages: 386
ISBN: 0-7645-0644-7
Retail Price: $19.99
Publication Date: 4/2000

Macworld Mac Upgrade and Repair Bible
By Todd Stauffer
Pages: 943
ISBN: 0-7645-3217-0
Retail Price: $39.99
Publication Date: 9/1998

For more information on these books, visit:
http://www.idgbooks.com/

Charles W. Moore

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Tuesday, 02-Dec-2008 08:10:22 EST