| Repairing and Upgrading Your PC was conceived one summer day in 2005. We had finished work on one book, Astronomy Hacks, and were starting work on the next, the fourth edition of PC Hardware in a Nutshell. As we bounced ideas back and forth with our friends and colleaguesMark Brokering and Brian Jepson with O'Reilly and our agent David Rogelberg with Studio B Productionsit became clear that we all wanted to do more than a simple revision of PC Hardware in a Nutshell. Mark, Brian, and David noted that Building the Perfect PC was selling quite well, and that perhaps we should do a similar booklarge format with lots of full-color illustrationsthat focused on repairing and upgrading PCs instead of building new ones. And so Repairing and Upgrading Your PC was born. In addition to Mark, Brian, David, and the O'Reilly production staff, we want to thank our technical reviewers, who did yeoman duty in finding our mistakes and in making numerous suggestions, all of which made this a better book. - Brian Bilbrey has been working with computers nearly continuously since Springsteen's Born to Run was released. Through that span of time, he's been a Banana Slug (UCSC student), an associate engineer with a medical electronics firm, managed an electronics assembly house, and been variously an administrator, a jack-of-all-trades, and/ or a consultant at a variety of small- and medium-sized businesses. Brian has written tutorials for IBM DeveloperWorks, co-authored a Linux tome that got canceled on the way to the printers, and scribbles copiously online at http://www.orbdesigns.com. Currently the Senior Systems Administrator for NFR Security, Inc., Brian lives in Bowie, Maryland, with his lovely wife Marcia and their two rescue dogs, Lucy and Molly.
- Jim Cooley built his first computer in the early 1990s to do custom stock-charting for brokers. As the Internet gradually put him out of a job, he ended up repairing them instead. After putting in a ten-year stint of computer doctoring in San Francisco, he recently moved to Athens, Ohio, where he shares a home with his partner and two attack ferrets. He continues to trade stocks, build and repair computers, and in his spare time enjoys languages, the piano, and roller-blading. His occasional grumble about this and that can be found at http://www.alwaysthecritic.com.
- Francisco García Maceda has assembled and fixed computers for a score of years on both sides of the Atlantic. He is an IT consultant and has designed, installed, and administrated enterprise networks in both the private and public sectors, from petrochemical companies to government agencies in Mexico. Francisco is a self-taught college dropout who has managed to earn the respect of his clients and peers by solving problems. He currently lives in Mexico City with his wife Consuelo and their newborn daughter María de los Àngeles.
- Ron Morse has been an electronics hobbyist for as long as he can remember. "Probably longer, but there was that unfortunate incident as a teenager when I removed the back of a then-new color television set just to see what was going on in there." In the more than 30 years since he was released from the hospital, he has devoted every spare dollar and available credit card balance to pursuing his interests in aviation, photography, and electronics. He bought his first personal computer in 1983 and has been repairing, upgrading, and modifying them (not necessarily in that order) since.
- In his spare time, Ron served as an active duty Navy officer for 26 years, retiring in 2001 with the rank of Captain. He was awarded the Bronze Star medal for his service in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm and also holds the Defense Superior Service Medal, among others.
- Since retiring from the Navy, Ron has been designing and maintaining custom computer systems for small businesses as well as serving as Director of the Rinconada Group, a strategic communications firm specializing in programs for elected officials and government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels.
- He lives with his wife Deborah, three Border collies, and a Queensland Blue Heeler in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We also want to thank our contacts at the hardware companies, who provided technical help, evaluation units, and other assistance. There are far too many to list individually, but they know who they are. Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our readers, many of whom have taken the time to offer useful suggestions for improvements to the book. Thanks, folks. We couldn't have done it without you. |
