john@ecsvax.UUCP (06/06/84)
The review in info-ibmpc digest vol. 3 issue 61 of Peter
Norton's "Inside the IBM PC" seems somewhat unfair to me.
The reviewer criticizes Norton (and his publisher, Brady)
for combining the text and programs so closely. While it is true
that Norton (particularly later in the book) says "see
the program for all the interesting details," this seems
entirely appropriate to me.
In the first place, many of the programs are very interesting and
do reveal things that would take a long time to describe
in plain English. In the second place, the relatively
inexperienced user of the PC can learn a lot just from the
text, especially early in the book.
The objection to the "marketing strategy" seems groundless.
Many of the programs are included in the text, so that if you don't
think they are worth the $65 or so charged, you don't have to
buy them. Or if you would rather just buy the programs, you
can do that. Given the current prices of most software, the
price seems about right.
The one problem I found with the book was that at times the
lists of the "services" (the ROM-BIOS diskette services, for instance)
seemed a little bit mechanical. Service 1 does this, service
2 does that, etc. I thought that some of this information
should have been organized into charts, since it
does not really fit into running prose. But do
keep in mind that the book is over one year old and
provided much timely information in a well-organized fashion
before this information became so well known.
john hogan
nc educational computing service
rtp, nc 27709 (919) 549 0671
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