Product Reviews

The For Dummies series of books taps into the basic human need to learn boring subjects with minimal effort. This CD follows the same ethos, and even removes the strain of holding a book in front of you. It doesn't interact with Windows at all, and functions much like an old-fashioned website with links to static pages of information. The fixed window size is quite small, but this means you can view it alongside the part of Vista you're trying to figure out.

Most of the information is presented as text with surprisingly few images, while the odd video is included to demonstrate trickier

ADVERTISEMENT

operations such as changing the firewall settings. Even so, concise article lengths and a chatty tone stop it from being too brain-numbingly dull. Articles are neatly arranged by category and subcategory, and the Search facility finds relevant articles quickly. However, searching for two words brings up any instances of either word, which isn't so useful. The only other annoyance is the voice used to announce category headings and narrate videos. It has an over-enthusiastic bark that is slightly incongruous in a friendly PC guide.

The articles are aimed squarely at beginners, covering basics such as the Recycle Bin and venturing as far as setting up a wireless router and removing spyware, but stopping short of surround sound and disk partitioning. A lot of the content isn't specific to Vista, but that's as it should be, since it's not designed for Windows XP experts migrating to Vista.

This may not be much more interactive than a book, but the content is excellent, well presented and easy to dip into. It can't always supply the answer to a problem, but its friendly, informative articles should help beginners use Vista more effectively and confidently.