Building Your Own PC: Buying and Assembling With Confidence - Softcover

This book distinguishes itself from other hardware how-tos by paying sufficient attention to the costs involved in acquiring the components that go into an Intel-based PC--the video card, the memory modules, the motherboard, and so forth. Many of this book's competitors ignore the price issue.

The book focuses on selecting components for your machine. While the author pays fair attention to all of the major components, such as CD-ROM drives and video cards, he gives no attention to less-standard components such as removable-media disk drives and network interface cards. He does, however, make specific brand-name recommendations for each kind of component, enabling novice parts buyers to head into the marketplace with some knowledge. The final chapter explains how to install Windows 95, but doesn't do a very good job of explaining CD-ROM installation with MSCDEX.exe, which is a potential hazard. --David Wall