Windows Vista The Definitive Guide Book Review

The One Vista Book You Will Always Use

I have installed and used two versions of Windows Vista now, Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium, so it was good to see that publishers have now began to release books on how to use Windows Vista. This book, Windows Vista The Definitive Guide is by O’Reilly, and its a big book, containing around 920 pages.

Windows Vista The Definitive Guide begins by taking you through installing Microsofts latest operating system and then onto how to customise the Vista desktop, menus and overall appearance to suit your tastes.

The book describes how to get the most out of Vista when installing and managing your software programs, and how to fine tune your hardware settings via Vista. Important areas include how to use the improved search functionality in Vista and how to use Internet Explorer 7 as well as how to be secure online.

There are a number of new media improvements in Vista and they are all covered in Windows Vista The Definitive Guide, including using Windows Photo Gallery, Building your Media Library, making DVDs and movies using Windows DVD Maker and Windows Movie Maker.

With security on everyones minds, there are chapters on securing your data on your PC and how to control access and share your data in Vista.

There are also sections in installing printers, faxes and scanners as well as how to share the devices across a network. A useful part of Vista is the voice recognition software which can dictate for you or allow you to control the whole of the Vista desktop via your voice commands.

If you have Vista on a laptop or notebook tablet, then there is an extra chapter for you which details some extra and different features that you will have available to you, including accessibility and battery power saving options.

There is a large chapter on how to set up your home or small business network. There are also chapters set aside for the main programs within Vista including Windows Defender, the new windows antivirus and antispyware type program as well as working with Windows Firewall and Windows Mail which is the new mail program to use instead of Outlook Express. Windows Contacts, Windows Calendar and Windows Meeting Space are also covered.

Setting up your broadband connections and setting up wireless networks is also covered, as well as managing user accounts and the setting up of parental controls.
There is also a big section on managing your disks and drives of your PC through Vista, such as installing new drives, changing letter names, formatting, encrypting, and maintenance of your hard disks, such as defragmentation, and scheduling tasks as well as disk recovery.

The end of the book is given over to using Media Center, which you do not get with Vista Home Basic edition. Media Center allows you to view your videos and listen to music in a GUI program as well as record and watch TV if you have a TV tuner and aerial connected to your PC.

Everything you need to know about how to use Windows Vista is in the Windows Vista The Definitive Guide book. The content is relevant to whatever version of Windows Vista you have, but I would say that the book is more directed at the people running Home Basic or Home Premium as the extra features that you get with Business, Enterprise and Ultimate are not covered.