Last updated 3/07/2006
Ted Landau's Mac OS X Help Line, Tiger Edition
Ted Landau's Mac OS X Help Line, Tiger Edition
Authors: Ted Landau with Dan Frakes
Publisher: O'Reilly
1177 pages .... $49.95
ISBN 0-321-33429-9
On-the-spot technical help when you need it most
This Tiger edition has not been reviewed, however Geof Gonter saw the Panther Edition of this book at the Peachpit booth at MacWorld in Boston, and recommended that we get a copy for the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group library.
The review of the Panther edition which follows should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect in this newer Tiger edition.
The author, Ted Landau, is the creator of the Mac Fixit Web site www.macfixit.com and author of Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters. He is one the most knowledgeable people you could turn to in case of a question about, or problem with, your Mac.
This s not a book you read. It is one you turn to and sample just to learn something new, or turn to when you have a specific question or problem. To guide your search for the information you need it has a 27 page detailed table of contents, and 32 page index.
Landau's Mac OS X Help Line contains in depth information about the Mac OS X system, and information about installing, maintaining, troubleshooting and backing it up. It also contains this kind of information about networking, the Internet, and iApps.
As a small useful example, here are four things Ted Landau recommends to maintain a healthy operating system:
Restart your Mac periodically (at least once a week, even if you're not having obvious problems). This is especially good for remedying problems related to virtual memory.
Run Disk Utility's Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions functions every a month or so.
Run Unix's maintenance scripts, just in case they were not run recently.
Consider deleting preference files and cache files that are a known common source of problems. The easiest way is via utilities such as Cocktail. Do this every few months, or any time you suspect a problem.
If you are the user group expert members turn to when they have a problem, or if you are in the business of troubleshooting and fixing Mac problems, you already have or probably should have this book.
If you are an intermediate to advanced user who likes to or needs to solve your own Macintosh problems, this book could be your best resource.
To this I would add this quote from the Tiger edtion.
I think that, as much as possible, fixing common problems on your Mac should not require knowledge of Unix.
but the book contains about 90 pages of information about the underlying Unix and what you should know about it for troubleshooting
For more information or to buy this book goto:
