BKMDMDUM.RVW 940127 Macmillan of Canada 29 Birch Avenue Toronto, Ontario M4V 1E2 Elizabeth Wilson 416-963-8830 Fax: 416-923-4821 or IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. International Data Group 155 Bovet Road, Suite 310 San Mateo, CA 94402 USA 415-312-0650 fax: 415-286-2740 Brandon Nordin, Marketing and International Sales "Modems for Dummies", Rathbone, 1993, 1-56884-001-2, U$16.95/C$21.95/UK#14.99 76004.3267@compuserve.com tinotin@aol.com rathbone@cerf.net For those who are not reading this online, trust me. An almost iron-clad, gold plated, guaranteed way to turn your local computer guru into a mumbling idiot is to give him or her a modem to set up. Computer communications is extremely easy--on the second call. (Even then, I'm not so sure. A friend calls the same BBS I do and uses the same settings I do. My messages go out OK using the word wrap on the editor, his have to have a carriage return at the end of every line. Then, there is the national public data network that we have here in Canada. I have to give my high tech modem a forty character command to convince it to act brain damaged in order to use it as all. Even then, the flow control doesn't work (Ceterum censeo Datapac delendam esse). All of this is to say that I have only the best wishes towards those who try to explain modems in simple terms. You cannot simply explain modems; you also have to talk about telephone service, telephone jacks, serial cables, serial connectors, conflicts and communications software. And that is only to test and see if the modem is working. The installation and setup is the hardest part: usage is relatively easy. Thus, parts one and two of Rathbone's work are somewhat disappointing. Only relatively speaking: it is easily as good as anything by, say, Baaks (BKPRTCOM.RVW, BKMDMREF.RVW) or Pournelle (BKPCCOMB.RVW). (It is also a lot more fun: at least we will assume that you will find Important Tips about keeping Chinese parsley fresh and jokes about your mouth being your cereal port amusing when you are banging your head about installing software.) Organization of presentation is critical with newcomers. Rathbone has organized the material, but, in spite of extensive efforts to make this a non- technical manual, the design is best understood by those who already understand data communications. This fits in with the statement in the Introduction that this book is a reference, but neophytes don't need a reference. They need either a tutorial or a cookbook. Part three is substantially better. An overview of whom to call, it has excellent comparative coverage of Prodigy, CompuServe and America Online. Treatment of GEnie is quite terse, and one suspects it was written from the perspective of a few days' exploration with a guest account. Delphi fares even worse, being lumped in with MCI Mail and other specialized also-rans. Rathbone's presentation is substantially better balanced than other works, though, with the inclusion of discussions of BBSes and the Internet. Rathbone seems somewhat hostile to the Internet, for some reason, but at least the material is there. Part four gives some very helpful troubleshooting lists organized by symptom. In conjunction with parts one and two, and a section from the BBS chapter, there is likely more material altogether than in other books. However, without the more practical organization of Gianone's "Using MS-DOS Kermit" (BKUMSKMT.RVW) or LeVitus and Ihnatko's "Dr. Macintosh's Guide to the Online Universe" (BKDMBTOU.RVW), this may not be of much help to the beginning user. One very good point, though, is the lack of system bias. Rathbone covers both Mac and MS-DOS specific points without denigrating one or the other. (A passing comment on the cartoons in the "...For Dummies" series. These seem to be assigned by the publisher rather than the individual authors. They also indicate a strong commitment to recycling on the part of IDG. May of the cartoons reappear in different books, with minor modifications to either the captions or elements of the pictures. There also doesn't seem to be much thought to matching cartoon to content: a picture of an evil looking djinn arising out of the smoke from a monitor which has obviously been rubbed the wrong way introduces not the chapter on GEnie but Compuserve.) For the novice, one would still have to recommend Gianone or LeVitus and Ihnatko in order to get the best chance for connection. Rathbone, however, is possibly the best work to date for an overview of where to call once you have "OK" to your "AT". copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKMDMDUM.RVW 940127 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 DECUS Symposium '95, Toronto, ON, February 13-17, 1995, contact: rulag@decus.ca