Review by Tom Anderson

If you're running NT Workstation instead of Windows 9x on your PC, odds are you already know that no user manual comes with NT Workstation.

If you switched from Windows 9x to NT Workstation to get more stability in your system, you may not need a manual, since the systems are very similar. But anyone using NT Workstation will find this book a thorough guide to the operating system.

Boyce leads off with a 15-minute guide for a quick start, and follows it with discussions of the NT interface. The second section covers NT Accessory programs, including programs like the media player, sound recorder, HyperTerminal and WordPad. The next part, about the control panel, covers all the control panel objects in alphabetical order: what they're used for, and how to change the default settings.

Part IV deals with communications and networking, and discusses the tools for connecting to the Internet and other computers. Boyce explains how to use Internet Explorer, dial-up networking, Outlook Express (for e-mail), and several of the TCP/IP tools like ping and FTP.

Part V explains security, with a discussion of setting permissions and rights on your system. The last major section covers the administrative tools of NT: performance monitor, user manager, event viewer, backup, etc.

Finally, appendices cover installing NT, the NT registry, and the console commands (including DOS commands) available in Windows NT Workstation.

Review by Eric Butow

The latest in a long line of Corel DRAW books has just hit the shelves: Peachpit Press's The Corel DRAW Wow! Book is a 250-page book that can be summed up in one word: dense. The book is interesting, and can also be amusing, but there are so many words and graphics packed into this small book that it overwhelms the reader.

The book itself is lavishly illustrated, and each full-color page shows off the wonderful illustrations and examples from real-world Corel DRAW artists. You will find many step-by-step examples so you can re-create the graphics yourself. You can also view some of the art on the book's companion Wow! CD-ROM; the CD-ROM also includes a lot of promotional materials for other Peachpit books and tryout versions of Corel DRAW 5 and 8. In an amusing slap to Corel DRAW's own bundled Photo-Paint, the Wow! CD-ROM also contains a tryout version of Adobe Photoshop 5.

There are some other entertaining parts of the book. I smiled when I viewed the page with the illustration of Hedy Lamarr that now graces the product packaging for DRAW versions 8 and 9. The caption underneath the book stated that the first order of business was to secure legal rights to the photo. As any Corel user knows, the artist (and Corel) didn't get permission from Hedy Lamarr herself, and there was a big legal brouhaha that's finally been settled.

Unfortunately, I had to squint to see the text underneath the Lamarr graphic, which characterizes the problem with this book-its physical dimensions are too small for the subject matter it covers. All too often the text is scrunched down to small type, and some of the graphics are unreadable. What's worse, on first glance you may think that instructions are step-by-step, but you soon discover that there are numerous mini-steps packed in large paragraphs underneath each step. These dense globs contain a lot of useful information but they're very hard to read.

The presentation of The Corel DRAW Wow! Book obscures the real-world application experience the authors are trying to present. In the end, the book is a dense piece of material that users of all levels will have difficulty reading through. It's best to leave this book on the shelf and hope that Peachpit Press will rethink its approach to this book for the next edition.