Ebook Details Title: Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC Author: Max Pinner Author Bio: Max Pinner is a freelance writer and a PC technician. File Size: 1.75MB Unzipped. Format: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) Number of Pages: Part 1: 143 pages; Part 2: 51 pages Subject: Fix common PC problems yourself. Price: $47+
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A couple years ago my computer decided one day not to boot up due to a corrupted registry. Of course, I didn’t know it was due to a corrupted registry at first; I had no idea such a thing even existed. All I knew was the computer wouldn’t boot. I ended up researching online (using my parents’ computer) and diagnosing and fixing the problem myself. Unfortunately, I had to roll back to a much earlier version of the registry, which undid months of changes to my computer settings. If I’d had Max Pinner’s Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC before that incident, not only would I have spent less time figuring out–and fixing–the problem, I would have had a recent backup of the registry to roll back to, thus saving me the nuisance of having all my settings go back to how I didn’t want them.

That’s because the first thing Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC has you do is set up your Maintenance Toolkit, a collection of free (or cheap) software programs designed to help prevent problems or, when a problem occurs, help diagnose and correct the underlying cause. And the first item in Pinner’s Toolkit is a registry backup program. You can bet I downloaded and ran it immediately! That suggestion alone let me know Max Pinner knew what he was talking about. (If only I’d known about the importance of backing up your registry a couple years ago…)

Next in the suggested Toolkit is a program designed to clean up your registry, which I also downloaded and ran. It removed lots of old junk cluttering up my registry. Other items in the Toolkit include anti-virus and anti-spyware programs (which I already had), as well as a disk cleanup program used to delete “electronic fluff and rubbish files.” After running this last program my laptop boots up a little faster.

Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC provides the solutions to other common Windows XP and Vista problems, such as blue screens, error messages, program freezes, computer crashes, and internet connection issues. Simple Fixes also touches on hardware problems with monitors, mice, drives, and keyboards. Max Pinner doesn’t claim his solutions will work every time for every computer, but that his solutions will usually fix 7 or 8 out of every 10 PC problems. I believe him, just due to my own experiences fixing my “sick PCs” with simple solutions.

For example, several years ago when I was still running a 486 computer, it decided one day not to boot up. In a panic, I immediately called a local computer tech company to set up an appointment to bring it in. The receptionist calmly asked me if I had a recovery disk. Um, why yes, I did. She told me to insert it into the floppy drive and try to boot the computer again. I did so and voilà, it worked! I was back in business in a matter of minutes. That receptionist saved me a costly service call and a day or two without my computer.

Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC is just like that receptionist–a calm voice offering a simple solution that saves you lost time and countless dollars. Pinner walks you through each step in diagnosing and fixing a problem. If it works, you just saved yourself a tech support call. If none of the solutions work, you’ll have a better understanding of the underlying problem when you talk to your technician. (And the more you can explain to your tech the less likely he/she is to treat you like a noob. That’s worth it right there.) Pinner tells you when you need to stop and call a technician, or, as the case may be, when it’s more cost-effective to just junk a component (like a troublesome printer) and buy a new one.

If you purchase Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC, I suggest you print it out (at least the sections dealing with computer access problems) because obviously if you can’t boot your computer, you can’t read the ebook to figure out why! Perhaps Pinner could market a print version…

Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC is $47, which I think is a bit pricey even though the information contained within is excellent. I’d market it for around $27, with a print version for $47. However, the current price is still well worth it if you’re having continuous troubles with your computer. (And if my laptop decides like all my other computers to just not boot up one day, I’d be willing to pay that and more to fix it…)

I also think perhaps the manual could have been condensed somewhat by consolidating sections that have the same or similar instructions. However, it isn’t meant to be read straight through like I read it, but by skipping to whatever section is relevant to your particular computer problem, so you likely won’t notice the repetitiveness of instructions as I did.

The instructions themselves are non-techie, easy to follow, and include some levity to help keep you calm when you feel like panicking. Cartoons sprinkled throughout the manual provide more humor, though I admit I didn’t quite get all the punch lines. Perhaps I just don’t understand Australian humor. (Max Pinner is Australian.) The Australian component also accounts for the alternate spelling of words in the text (which most people likely wouldn’t notice, but it’s my curse that I do) such as color/colour, practice/practise, etc.

Bottom line: Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC is a great manual for anyone with a PC computer to have on hand, especially those who aren’t technically-minded. If you have a PC running Windows, it will eventually blue screen and crash. That’s a given. Get Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC before that happens!

For more information and to purchase, visit Simple Fixes For Your Sick PC

Tags: computer, Max Pinner, Vista, Windows XP

Ebook Details Title: Bumps in the Night Author: William Todd Format: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) Also available in HTML and Microsoft Lit File Size: 473kb Unzipped (.pdf). Number of Pages: 111 Summary: A collection of nine chilling short stories of the supernatural and the macabre. Author Bio: William Todd has been writing online for almost ten years. He was the third most popular author on the website Storiesbyemail.com before it shut down. He has an 8 year old son Kiaran, who is a budding author himself, and a 6 year old daughter Alina, who has Down’s Syndrome. He and his wife Joan have been married for 10 years, and make Erie, PA their home. When not writing, he is a full time histologist and a part time pathologist assistant at a local hospital. His hobbies are writing, running, reading, and watching old movies.
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Bumps in the Night hits a few bumps in the road in its endeavor to terrify the reader, but for the most the part the anthology contains well-written and entertaining tales. William Todd has a great knack for capturing the narrative style of nineteenth-century characters, which enhances the gothic feel of two of my favorites: The Whitaker House Curse and Jack. And either Todd has a vast vocabulary–or made ample use of a good thesaurus–because several words sprinkled throughout the stories sent me searching for definitions at Dictionary.com. It isn’t often a fiction writer stumps me with a word, much less several, so I’m impressed with that alone. The Whitaker House Curse is a first-person account in which the protagonist hurriedly relates his fateful tale under threat of an imminent deadline. It has such great voice I almost felt I was reading something from Edgar Allen Poe. However, the epilogue seemed a bit tacked on and unnecessary, and it almost ruined the ending for me. I think the story would be better without it. On the other hand, Jack, a chilling first-person take on the infamous serial killer, probably has the most surprising–and ultimately, pleasing–endings in this collection. Rounding out my favorites of the bunch are The Night Stalker and Bumps in the Night. In The Night Stalker, a prostitute suspects her latest john may just be a killer when he drives her down a dark, isolated road. The second half of the story is terrifying, and I loved the ending. Bumps in the Night is told from the viewpoint of a Down Syndrome girl–a delightful young protagonist with a fresh, new voice–who once a month listens to the horrifying sounds of her father’s transformations. My only quibble with this story is that because it’s written with Todd’s wonderful slightly turn-of-the-century tone, the mention of computers by the protagonist jarred me; until then my mind’s eye had placed the setting in the distant past, not modern times. Similarly, the characters in The People Under The River speak like 1930’s gangsters, so their references to 1970’s pop culture (and use of a weapon created in the 80’s) made me reorient my initial impression of the time period. This story, in which two killers’ dumping ground is at risk of discovery by an innocent young couple, is the least frightening, since it doesn’t deal with anything supernatural, though it has a satisfying ending. The malevolent entity encountered in Ghost Hunters had the potential to be the most terrifying for me, but the ending fizzled instead of sizzled. The same was true for The Delivery, in which a scientifically-minded courier has his beliefs turned inside out, though the narrative benefits from Todd’s period tone of voice. In Eyes, an arrogant businessman disses the wrong old woman and finds himself fighting for his life. The storyline was predictable, but I found the consequences of his actions chilling nonetheless. An FBI agent investigates the disappearance of several people in the creepy and macabre Flesh and Blood, and though I thought the ending was darkly humorous, I couldn’t tell whether it was intentionally so. I generally don’t read (or watch) horror, because though I enjoy being scared in the moment, I typically regret it by nightfall when I urgently feel the need to go to bed with an ornately bejeweled cross and a spray bottle filled with holy water. So Bumps in the Night elicited just about the right amount of spook for me–I was entertained but slept just fine after reading it. While not all the stories are perfect, Todd has great writing style, likable characters, and knows how to keep the reader in suspense. I look forward to reading more from him. Click here to read an excerpt Click here to order Bumps in the Night

Tags: fiction ebook review, horror, William Todd