Hi, Michael.
My advice is different from most - except that I agree with Ken Blake that
"Windows Vista Inside Out" is an excellent resource. I'll be looking for
the Win7 version of Inside Out as soon as it is available!
My favorite resource for understanding the successive Windows versions has
always been the Resource Kits published by Microsoft Press. They are thick
(1400+ pages), expensive (usually about $50), and they cover a LOT more than
I need to know - like how to deploy the new system to your thousands of
computers in dozens of offices. :>( Stuff like that is nearly half the
book and does me no good at all for my one computer and no network.
But the remaining half of the Resource Kit is worth the full price of the
book! An afternoon invested in studying (not just skimming) the chapters on
disks and file systems, and the startup sequence, and on troubleshooting
problems, will pay you big dividends, not just for Vista and not just for
today, but for as long as you use computers - which just might be for the
rest of your life.
Although operating systems have evolved through several generations, I still
use every day much of the basic knowledge of computers, hard disks,
operating systems (including MS-DOS and Windows) and file systems that I
learned in the 1950's. Much of that knowledge came from the original Norton
Utilities (especially DiskEdit) before Symantec bought out Norton and dumbed
down those utilities. Now all we can learn from them is which button to
push in the GUI, not what goes on inside the computer when that button gets
pushed. Today's Symantec programs are like "Norton Utilities for Dummies".
:>(
I recommend spending your money AND investing your TIME in understanding
in-depth resources like Inside Out and the Resource Kits - after you've
graduated from "for Dummies".
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100