The latest edition of The Complete PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide provides comprehensive coverage of IBM-compatible personal computer hardware standards, past and present. Mark Minasi does a very good job of explaining how different manufacturers approached various problems, so you"re likely to find at least a brief mention of even the most obscure piece of hardware. There"s not a lot of coverage of emerging standards, though, and the author doesn"t mention PC-100 RAM. He does, however, present troubleshooting strategies better than most of his competitors, and he shares dozens of simple tips (such as tying overhand knots in power and phone cords to protect against lightning). Minasi also attempts to substantiate or debunk hardware-related rumors where appropriate. This makes for entertaining reading. Some readers may be put off by this book"s nearly complete lack of illustrations. There are heavily illustrated spreads that explain common hardware tasks, such as installing a new video card and snapping new RAM modules into place, and these sections use drawings that are far easier to understand than the murky photographs that other books employ. However, nonprocedural sections have very few illustrations. --David Wall Topics covered: All major PC subsystems, including processors, random access memory (RAM), various sorts of fixed and removable disks, and video interfaces.