At Last! A Book for Intermediate Users! Do you find Windows XP frustrating? You're not alone. Best-selling author Dan Gookin lays bare the best (and worst) of Windows XP in this book for users who want to work faster, easier, and smarter. If you want real help dealing with Windows XP's imperfections, take a deep breath and let Dan be your guide. Using easy-to-follow instructions, Dan reveals alternative (and better) ways of completing particular tasks, shows you how to use powerful productivity-increasing commands, and teaches you how to configure Windows to suit your needs. You'll also learn how Windows works so that you can always remain one step ahead of it. Dan Gookin's Naked Windows XP transforms you into a more expert, dynamic, and headache-free user. Expert Advice That Will Change Life As You Know It (for the Better) * Why the System Configuration utility is a buried treasure...and what it can do for you * Whipping Internet Explorer into shape * Dinking with and wrangling the Taskbar * Sending the Quick Launch bar to obedience school * Fixing, pruning, and grafting menus * Making the Desktop your own * Protecting files from death, destruction, or mere accidental erasure * Teaching the Notification Area to obey your whim * Secrets and solutions for working with images and graphics * How MediaPlayer's playlists can make your life easier * Curing those Internet connection blues * How to say "No!" to spam * Disk management chores you really need to do * And much more!

"The author's humor and his ability to keep the reader's attention are masterful." —Andy Barkl, Technical Reviewer Salve For Your Office Headaches! Covers Office 2003, XP and 2000—And Perfectly Useful for Office 97, Too! Is it the best thing since sliced bread? A bug-riddled piece of junk? Here, best-selling author Dan Gookin skillfully navigates between these two extremes, laying bare the best and worst of Office in order to help you achieve a single, all-important goal: working faster, easier, and smarter. You'll harness the real power of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook while avoiding their pitfalls—and you'll discover the ways they actually can be made to work together as a truly integrated suite. Dan Gookin's Naked Office means the end of Office-inspired headaches. (Well, the vast majority of them, anyway. He's not a miracle-worker, after all.) Expert Instruction to Change Office Life as You Know It (for the Better) Making a paragraph look the way you want it to look Understanding how styles work and making them work for you Locking a document to prevent changes, and tracking changes made by others Using Excel as a database--and not just for numbers Unraveling formulas and remembering what goes where Organizing e-mail with Outlook Getting the most out of Outlook's scheduling abilities Unlocking the mechanics and philosophy of PowerPoint presentations Oh, and of course--much, much more

"Best-selling author Gookin...keeps readers laughing while he takes them from being a ho-hum user to an advanced Office maven." —Charles Carr, ComputorEdge Magazine, www.computoredge.com Just about anyone can slap together a Word document or fill an Excel grid with numbers, but power users understand how to tap into the full functionality of these applications. Best-selling author Dan Gookin skips what you already know and takes you directly to the best and most useful parts of Word and Excel--the commands, shortcuts, and combinations of functions that will give your creations that extra-added wow factor. The only book to focus exclusively on these two critical applications, Power Excel and Word teaches you how to harness their power and avoid their pitfalls in one compact volume. By following step-by-step tutorials, you'll discover how to work faster, easier, and smarter. Learn essential techniques you'll use every day, including how to: Precisely format a paragraph in Word Manipulate drawings and pictures in a document Create your own custom tool bars Know when to use a table in Word and when to insert an Excel worksheet Embellish your documents and reports Generate sophisticated charts and graphs by importing Web-based content Use styles and templates to save oodles of time Protect your documents against unwanted changes Employ Excel as a database manager Share your work with others Produce a list in Excel as a mail merge database for Word And much, much more! Most Office books are boring and quickly go out of date. Dan Gookin takes a uniquely entertaining approach designed to increase your skills, whether you're using Office 2003, Office XP, or Office 2000. And many of these tricks are even effective in Office 97!

Written by parents for parents! We humans are pretty clever. We’ve mastered fire, invented the wheel, calculated the age of the Universe, sent people to the Moon, built machines that think, and cracked the genome. So you’d think that with all our smarts, somebody would’ve come up with a surefire formula for raising kids. Maybe that’s because every child, like every parent, is an individual, and no two parent-child relationships are ever the same. So, you can give up any notions of being a perfect parent. But, you can learn to keep the big mistakes to a minimum and make the parenting enterprise easier and more rewarding for your children and you. Which is where this book comes in. Whether you’re child is a newborn, a teen, or somewhere in-between, Parenting For Dummies gives you the scoop on parenting basics. From dealing with a crying baby and potty training, to building self-esteem and talking with them about sex, it offers a gold mine of up-to-date advice and guidance on how to: Learn to communicate with your kids Develop a good relationship with your kids Keep your kids safe and healthy Help your kids grow up to be good people Keep your cool and control their behavior Discipline constructively and with a minimum of stress Build self-esteem in your children Avoid committing the parenting sins your parents taught you Experts Sandy and Dan Gookin—she’s the parenting expert for Parents Magazine and Working Mother Magazine and he’s a father of four—avoid the psychological hype and medical terminology and give you the straight poop on all aspects of child-rearing, including: Speaking and listening to kids The importance of being consistent Keeping a sense of humor Dealing with babies Childhood growth and development Health and nutrition Kids’ changing physical needs Developing a good person Parenting For Dummies gives you the know-how and skills you need to be the parent of healthy, happy kids.

If you think anti-virus software is enough protection from hackers, think again! Have you ever engaged in high-risk Internet activities? You have if you've ever shopped, chatted with a friend, played a game or swapped an MP3 file while online. And you'll be shocked to learn how incredibly vulnerable your PC is if you're connecting via cable/DSL. Your risk of Internet attacks is likely to increase in the coming years--in both frequency and destructiveness. It's simply becoming easier for computer criminals to access and sabotage your PC, and even to steal your identity. Learn how to protect your PC from fast-spreading viruses in disguise, Internet-connection hijackers, con artists after your personal information, annoying spam e-mail and relentless pop-up advertising. Absolute PC Security and Privacy shows you how to detect security holes, reduce your chances of attack, recognize when you're under attack and stop an attack in progress. Coverage includes: * Understanding the various types of viruses and how they spread * Learning which virus types you're most vulnerable to * Protecting your PC from virus infection * Recovering from a virus attack and disinfecting your system * Understanding the different types of Internet-based attacks * Protecting your system from an Internet-based attack * Protecting your system in a P2P environment * Defending your home or small business network * Securing your wireless network * Understanding hardware and software firewalls and which type you should use * Recognizing when your system is under an Internet-based attack * Shutting down and recovering from an Internet-based attack * Tips and tricks for safeguarding your personal information * Practicing safe shopping and avoiding auction fraud while online * Protecting yourself and your children from online predators * Understanding how spyware works and how to defeat it * Using passwords, digital certificates, and encryption * How to anonymously surf the Web and send e-mail * How to keep your contact information out of the hands of spammers * How to eliminate spam e-mail and pop-up advertisements

Find out what you need to know about using your computer! The fun and easy way® to get your PC up and running in no time! Want to burn your own CD-R? How about e-mailing digital pictures to friends? Completely updated to cover the latest technologies, this bestselling guide demystifies Windows XP, spam blocking, digital imaging, and much more. Dan Gookin takes you from startup to creating a Web page, helping you get the most out of your PC! Discover how to: Set up your computer – painlessly Understand PC jargon and acronyms (really!) Network your computers Have fun with digital cameras and burn CDs Protect your PC from viruses The Dummies Way Explanations in plain English "Get in, get out" information Icons and other navigational aids Tear-out cheat sheet Top ten lists A dash of humor and fun