REVIEW: THE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES by John R Levine & Carol Baroudi IDG 1994 and THE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES QUICK REFERENCE by John R Levine & Margaret Levine Young IDG 1994 I first heard about the ....FOR DUMMIES books a few years ago when a friend told me of his great success with DOS FOR DUMMIES. I figured if any book could teach the intricacies of DOS to a 50 plus year-old State Trooper it just had to be good. Well, THE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES wasn't a disappointment. THE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES is the quintessential Internet "newbie" book, but covers a lot of ground as we shall see - 29 chapters filled with easy-to-understand information and advice for beginners. The book is divided into six parts: Getting Onto the Internet, Mail and Gossip, Instant Gratification, Finding Stuff on the Net, The Part of Tens and Resource Reference. The first few chapters are devoted to a brief history of the Internet, and how to connect to it, with separate chapters for DOS, UNIX, Macs users and a brief explanation of how the net works. Next, the book delves into the world of e-mail: addresses, using it, etiquette, etc. Several mail readers, such as X-MAIL, EUDORA and ELM are briefly covered as well as how to find somebody's e-mail address and how to address e-mail to other services such as Compuserve, MCIMAIL, FIDO, etc. Finally. there's a chapter devoted to mailing lists, including coverage of LISTSERV and MAJODOMO and how to use them effectively. The next two chapters are devoted to using network news and newsreaders like RN. TRN and TRUMPET. Other information includes how to use PNEWS to post articles to USENET and a sampler of network news resources. Other subjects covered in THE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES include network chat, TELNET (with a chapter of interesting computers to log onto) and how to transfer files using FTP and FTPMAIL (with many listings of interesting FTP sites you can "visit" to get some pretty good stuff.) Other subjects include ARCHIE, GOPHER. WAIS, the World Wide Web and MOSAIC. Finally Authors Levine and Baroudi leave us with advice on avoiding problems, tims-saving shortcuts, tricks for Windows users, some interesting things to do on the Net, sources of Internet software and a list of service providers. The book is filled with sidebar paragraphs with related information and I particularly enjoyed Rich Tennant's "Fifth Wave" cartoons. The authors are to be commended for their light. entertaining style of presenting the information with humor and informal style. THE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES QUICK REFERENCE (ISBN: 1-56884-168-X) is a portable aide-memoire that can be carried easily with a laptop or notebook computer and is an excellent reference source and memory jogger that will prove very useful on the road. Even if you are not a "road warrier", the QUICK REFERENCE makes a very useful desk reference and, at the price ($8.95) is clearly a bargain. There's a sequel, MORE INTERNET FOR DUMMIES which I will review in the very near future. %T The Internet for Dummies, 2nd Ed. %A John R Levine & Carol Baroudi %I IDG Books %C Foster City California %D 1994 %O 19.99 %G ISBN: 1-56884-222-8 %P 427 pp %K Internet, computer networks (C) 1995 Michael Crestohl Nahant Massachusetts USA mc@shore.net DISCLAIMER: I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in the success or failure of the book or materials reviewed herewith, nor have I received any compensation (other than a review copy requested by me) from anyone who has. All opinions expressed are strictly my own. Other Internet and Aviation book/software reviews by me can be obtained by anonymous FTP from: x2ftp.oulu.fi in the /pub/books/crestohl directory.