Expert: Bobbert - 8/28/2011

Question
I
m woefully ignorant and paranoid about getting a bad deal when I buy, I don't know what questions to ask, terminology, anything.  Money is BIG concern. Needs: I'm on another allexpert site, and stuff like this is one type of thing I need it for.  E mail, Internet search, eventually desk-top publishing, but if that's very expensive to get into, it'll have to wait a while.  I don't want something that does so little that it isn't very useful. How do wireless systems work?  Do you have a recommendation for a book to teach myself, like an "Idiot's Guide" or "For dummies" or similar. I'd like something that does clear photos/illustration but don't know how big a screen I need to get that, what specs I guess.

Answer
Generally speaking, your requirements are "easy" for modern hardware - most machines produced in the last ten years, and probably all machines produced in the last four, will satisfy your needs. More complex professional-level DCC (digital content creation) suites, like Adobe Creative Suite, or Sony Vegas Pro, will likely fare better on newer and more specialized hardware. More common suites, like Microsoft Office, Oracle StarOffice, or Microsoft Expression should be substantially easier to accommodate, depending on your specific requirements (some Excel books can be incredibly demanding of any hardware, and some seemingly mundane databases can have storage and memory I/O demands that rival those of many physics or statistics suites).

I generally dislike guide books, as they're usually woefully incomplete and generally outdated by the time they come to publication. I would, instead, suggest finding books or articles written about specific topics. O'Reilly books are usually at least a good starting point, if not an authoritative reference, on many subjects. Microsoft KB (Knowledge Base) articles can be incredibly useful, as can TechNet (also Microsoft) articles, and many things published by IT/enthusiast ezines and websites (such as c|net, Tom's Hardware, Guru3D, TechRepublic, and many others). Wikipedia is also a good source, as long as you can direct your queries in a general direction. I'm a big fan of HowStuffWorks as well. When all else fails, Google and Bing can be your best friend. Remember to format queries in terms of keywords, not natural-language questions. For example, you asked about "wireless systems" - which can be fed into Google directly, although a question like "how do wireless systems work?" will produce much more erratic results.

On the wireless networking line, here are some examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_networking
http://www.howstuffworks.com/wireless-network.htm

More specialized articles on implementation can be found as well:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/wirelesstips.aspx
http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessproducts/a/howtobuildwlan.htm


If you absolutely prefer a text-book reference, I would suggest something at least geared for a more professional audience (so it will at least have some depth, even if it is outdated or over-written with a lot of design/historical theory). Last I knew, "A+ Certification for Dummies" was still reasonably relevant, although with recent changes to the A+ certification criteria, this may have changed. There are a number of other (more expensive) A+ books as well, I would probably avoid anything with a triple digit price tag. Books designed for introductory college or learning annex courses may also be useful, I don't have any that I like (again, for the reasons stated above). My best advice is to learn by doing - when or if you encounter a given problem, research it, and work the problem. It may take a considerable amount of time at first, but eventually you'll begin to see overlaps in practice and theory, and the entire corpus will become more accessible and familiar to you.

Don't expect to learn everything in a day, or (quite truthfully) ever (the entirety of ECE/CS/IT theory is simply too large for any one person to master or even reasonably sample). Do expect to learn a lot, and probably not implement much of it.

If you have more specific questions about buying hardware, I'd be happy to field them, I'll just need to know more about what your budget and perhaps more specific requirements are.

-bob