By comparison, Idiot's Guide is organized more as an introductory text, especially the first few chapters, which provide an overview of multimedia. Idiot's Guide comes with a CD-ROM that contains some shareware games, a few shareware utilities, and some pictures, sound clips, and video clips. If you buy Idiot's Guide , remember that if you decide to keep any of the shareware programs, you must pay a registration fee to that program's author. As mentioned earlier, this reviewer prefers Dummies . For example, both books have chapters on installing cards, setting jumpers, and using DIP switches.
Dummies also has pictures of the different kinds of cards for different bus types.
This is very important if you accidentally try to put your brand new PCI video card into an ISA slot. Idiot's Guide doesn't help you there, but Dummies can. Dummies contains other information that Idiot's Guide lacks, such as how to hook up your computer to your home stereo, so you can take advantage of your expensive amplifier and speakers. Of course, Dummies has its share of problems, too. My favorite is the typesetting snafu on page 258.