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| Assessing Whether Upgrading Is Really Necessary | |
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| Making the Call: When, Why, and Whether You Should Upgrade | |
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| Assessing What You Really Want from Your PC | |
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| What Should You Upgrade? | |
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| What Can You Upgrade? | |
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| Repairs That Enable You to Avoid Upgrades | |
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| Is Your Old Computer Worth Fixing or Upgrading? | |
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| Nonobvious Factors That Render Your PC Nonupgradeable | |
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| Why Upgrading a Notebook PC Might Not Be Doable | |
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| Now, Let's Find Out What Kind of Computer You Have | |
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| What You Can Tell by Looking at the Outside | |
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| What Your BIOS Can Tell You Before You Look Inside | |
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| Matching Your Computer to Your Operating System's Requirements | |
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| What It Takes to Upgrade Each Part of Your Computer | |
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| Parts Is Parts | |
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| The Motherboard Makes the Right Connections | |
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| The Brain of Your PC: The CPU | |
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| Basic Functions Are in the System BIOS | |
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| The PC's Think Tank: RAM | |
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| Save It for the Hard Disk | |
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| Your PC's Video System | |
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| What You Need to Know Before You Open Your PC | |
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| Creating an Emergency Diskette | |
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| Now Back Up Your Data | |
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| Putting Your Toolkit Together | |
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| Avoiding Frying Yourself on Your PC | |
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| Preventative Maintenance and Other Ways to Avoid Upgrading | |
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| Fixing the Most Common Problems | |
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| General Hardware Dilemmas | |
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| Keyboard Calamities | |
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| When the Mouse Becomes a Rat | |
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| Infrared Devices: Not Entirely Cordless | |
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| When Your Printer Makes You Feel Powerless | |
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| Monitoring Your Monitor Troubles | |
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| Fixing a Drive That's Floppin' | |
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| Optical Drives and Sonic Discrepancies | |
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| When Your Modem's on the Fritz | |
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| What to Do When You're Not Sure What the Problem Is | |
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| Cleaning Windows | |
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| Crud Windows Leaves on Your Disk | |
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| Avoiding Crashes | |
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| Attitude Adjustments | |
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| Keeping Your Programs Installed | |
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| "Repairing" the Hard Disk Instead of Replacing It | |
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| What to Do When Your Hard Disk Plays Hide and Seek | |
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| Checking the Hard Disk for Problems | |
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| Reorganizing the Hard Disk | |
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| Converting from FAT16 to FAT32 | |
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| Taking Everything Apart | |
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| The Easiest Things to Upgrade | |
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| Replacing Your Keyboard | |
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| Replacing the Mouse | |
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| Acquiring or Replacing a Printer | |
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| Improving the View with a New Monitor | |
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| Scanners: The Latest Standard Equipment | |
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| Digital Cameras | |
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| Accelerating Your PC with a New CPU | |
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| The Size and Shape of Things | |
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| The Manufacturers and Their Products | |
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| Speed: Illusion and Realities | |
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| The Issue of Lower Voltage | |
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| Performing Brain Surgery (Replacing the CPU) | |
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| Replacing the Motherboard and Its Parts | |
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| Shopping for a New Motherboard | |
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| The Importance of the Chipset | |
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| Motherboard-ectomy Illustrated | |
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| Yes, You, Too, Can Replace Your BIOS! | |
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| Replacing a Dead Battery | |
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| Memorize This! Upgrading Memory | |
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| Memories Through the Years ... or Rather, Months | |
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| Buying the Right Kind of RAM | |
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| Installation: You Must Remember This | |
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| Face the Interface | |
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| Everything You Didn't Want to Know About Busses | |
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| Enabling Your External Parallel and Serial Ports | |
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| Installing and Replacing Expansion Cards | |
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| Storage Device Controller Interfaces | |
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| What You Need to Know About USB | |
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| Gearing Up for FireWire | |
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| The Online Line | |
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| The "Telephone" Modem | |
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| Installing a Telephone Modem | |
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| The Cable Modem: Real, Live Broadband | |
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| DiSiLlusionment | |
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| Broadband Firewalls and Why You Need One | |
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| I Can See Clearly Now: Upgrading Your Video | |
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| Shopping for a Video (Graphics) Card | |
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| Performing Video Card Surgery | |
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| The Long-Awaited Marriage of TV and PC | |
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| Sensational Stereophonic Sound | |
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| Sound Card Standards | |
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| Installing Your Sound Card | |
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| Speakers of the House | |
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| Hands-On Hard Disk Replacement | |
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| Issues to Keep in Mind While Shopping | |
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| Deciphering Hard Drive Characteristics | |
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| Performing Hard Drive Surgery | |
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| Replacing a Diskette Drive | |
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| Shopping for a New Drive | |
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| Putting Your New Floppy in Drive | |
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| Adding an Optical Drive | |
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| Of CD-ROM, CD-R, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD+RW, and WHAT-NOT | |
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| The Interface Factor | |
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| Recordable Optical Drives | |
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| The Performance DiViDend | |
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| How to Install an Optical Drive | |
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| Powering Up the Power Supply | |
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| Going Shopping for a New Power Supply | |
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| Installing a New System Power Supply | |
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| Power Security Outside of Your Power Supply | |
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| Cooling and Ventilating Your System | |
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| Your Most Valuable Component: The Processor Cooler | |
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| Installing a Cooling Device | |
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| The Importance of Proper Ventilation | |
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| Adding or Replacing Additional Fans | |
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| Classier Chassis: Consider a New System Case | |
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| Shopping for a New Case | |
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| Moving Day: Factors to Consider | |
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| Installing and Maintaining a Home Network | |
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| More Than One Computer? How About a Network? | |
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| The Components of a Home Network | |
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| Making Your House Network Ready | |
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| Architectural Digest | |
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| Installation: You Become the Cable Guy | |
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| Putting Everything Back Together | |
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| Making Your Computer Boot Up Again | |
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| Configuring Your Reassembled PC | |
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| What to Do When Your COM Ports Start a Fight | |
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| Fixing What IRQs You | |
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| Messing with DMA Address Junk | |
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| Partitioning and Formatting a Hard Disk Drive | |
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| Getting Windows to Recognize Your New Toys | |
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| Introducing Your Shy Operating System to Your New Hardware | |
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| Using Windows Device Manager to Explore Your System | |
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| Setting Up Your Network | |
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| Index | |