Need computer information in a readable form? Try these PCReview books, writes BARBARA LUDMAN
THE boffins who write the Mail & Guardian’s PCReview supplement have now turned out an entertaining series of guides to the computer age.
First up is Irwin Manoim’s Buying the Right Computer (R49,95); next comes Mish Middelmann’s The Lowdown on Windows 95 (R54,95); and then one moves to Arthur Goldstuck’s The SA Internet Services Directory (R44,95). Still to come: Gus Silber on software for children.
Manoim, editorial director of the daily Electronic Mail & Guardian – Africa’s first electronic newspaper – set up the world’s first commercial newspaper produced entirely by desk-top publishing when he and Anton Harber founded The Weekly Mail in 1985.
Not that Manoim knew what he was doing. “When I bought my first computer,” he confesses in the book, “I was delighted by the magnificent price I’d clinched, over a thousand rands cheaper than the identical machine from a store down the road. I was lugging my boxes to the car boot when a thought struck me: ‘Where’s the box with the monitor?’ ‘Oh,’ said the dealer, ‘the monitor is never included in the price.'”
Many years later, the monitor is still often not included in the price …”
Manoim first saw a monitor – that’s the bit with the screen – on the Sunday Times in 1977, where he was supporting himself as a low-ranking sub-editor while trying to finish a master’s thesis. “When they introduced computers to the Sunday Times there was a horrified reaction. They made everyone go on a course with an exam at the end and said anyone who failed would be fired.” Manoim was the only sub who took this idle, obviously jocular threat seriously, and the only one who passed. So, he – a 23-year-old junior in a sea of men whose ages ranged from 50 to 70 – was the only one who got a computer.
“As a result of the fact that I was the only one at the paper who could use a computer, I rose at extraordinary speed because I became indispensable.”
The guide fits pretty well into the same category, for people about to go boldly into a computer shop for the first time and confront a 19-year-old computer salesman.
You think it’s easy to buy a computer? “It’s not just a matter of buying a brand name. You’re buying a set of specifications, and that makes it tricky. You have to know a bit about it.
“There are quite a few simple guides to computers available, but they invariably confuse simple with simpleton and are generally aimed at either children or retarded Americans.”
The target audience for his guide is “people accustomed to reading long screeds in the Mail & Guardian, people who manage to hold down responsible jobs and bring up their children but are frightened of video recorders or cellphones and, most of all, computers.”
It’s also aimed at people who can use a bit of humour in their lives. It’s a very entertaining book, whether explaining how the microprocessor runs its kingdom from a palace that resembles a squashed matchbox, or advising readers on what kind of monitor to buy.
Once the computer has been bought and the 19-year-old salesman has talked you into a Windows 95 operating system, it’s time for Middelmann’s book.
Middelmann was a science teacher once upon a time and knows how to explain arcane but vital concepts. Founder and director of Praxis Computing, he’s an expert on networking, ie getting computers in an office to talk to one another. And he’s got a radio programme on computers on Johannesburg’s Radio 702.
He also masquerades as Dr Byte in PCReview, responding to the agonised queries of readers whose operating systems have seized up – or, lately, readers who have bought Windows 95 and can’t for the life of them get it to work. Thus the book.
Copiously illustrated with pictures of screens, command fields and other bits you have to see to understand, the book takes ordinary computer users step-by-step through the system, from setting the date to choosing the right options; which add- ons are worthwhile and which you should avoid; those updates that have been making internet connections and e-mail work much better; how much disk space you should leave free so the system has room to operate.
“There are zillions of choices for everything. I’ve picked the ones that work,” says Middelmann, thus saving the reader time and frustration. “The main thing is to get control of your computer, rather than to have it control you.”
If you’re looking to take off into cyberspace and want to find a company to help you design a Web page, provide a link- up to the internet, train you or your staff; if you’re looking for an advertising agency that offers Web services or a firm that will connect you to other like-minded operations, it’s time for The SA Internet Services Directory by Arthur Goldstuck, editor of PCReview and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Internet and The Art of Business on the Internet.
This, his newest book, contains information on businesses providing a host of services throughout the country, including internet cafes, hardware and software firms, and consultants.