From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 20:52:10 +1000
Subject: Book Review - Using Email Effectively

     title: Using Email Effectively
        by: Linda Lamb + Jerry Peek
 publisher: O'Reilly & Associates 1995
  subjects: computing
     other: 146 pages, index

The best thing about _Using Email Effectively_ is how short it is:
my experience is that the chance of most manuals, documentation
or guides -- particularly those aimed at beginners -- being read
is inversely proportional to their length.  Another feature that
makes _Using Email Effectively_ accessible is the use of side-bars
and short quotes to break up the text into more manageable portions.
Despite its brevity, it does manage to cover all the important facets
of using electronic mail, and I will definitely be purchasing a copy
for my department and encouraging my users to read it: it will not
only save me time spent answering queries about bounce messages and
how to transmit files via mail, but will also ease my conscience
about not doing as much as I might have done to educate them about
email netiquette and mailing lists.  Other topics covered include
email style, the organisation of saved mail and the use of signatures.

_Using Email Effectively_ also contains some mailer-specific material of
a technical kind (there are examples from pine, mush, elm, eudora, 
cc:mail, zmail, mail, xmh, and mh).  This could be a bit confusing for
the novice, but most of it is in side-columns or separate digressions,
and the authors always make it clear when they are talking about
something applicable only to Unix systems or particular mailers.  This
material will help to give the reader some idea of the variety of
mailers in use, something people who have only ever had experience of a
single mail program often have trouble grasping.

--

Disclaimer: I requested and received a review copy of _Using Email
Effectively_ from O'Reilly & Associates but I have no stake, financial
or otherwise, in its success.

--

%T	Using Email Effectively
%A	Linda Lamb
%A	Jerry Peek
%I	O'Reilly & Associates
%C	Sebastapol, California
%D	1995
%O	paperback, index
%G	ISBN 1-56592-103-8
%P	xii,146pp
%K	computing

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
18 May 1995

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 Copyright (C) Danny Yee 1995 : Comments and criticism welcome
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