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Considerations and Scope
Our focus is on user applications, however, not on system or network
administration. While we give you a basic understanding of these
deeper levels and what's available, specific
installation details and detailed configuration information for
system and network administrators are largely beyond the scope of the
book. There are also settings that depend on decisions made by your
network administrator or Internet Service Provider (ISP), especially
with networks systems. Whenever possible, we give you the information
you need, but there are times when all we can tell you is where to go
for additional information.
We have tried to speak universal truths about Windows XP, but
sometimes we are forced to make assumptions about your settings or
installed options. Microsoft gives so many configuration options that
the truth is, for better or worse, that each user's
machine represents a slightly different installation of Windows XP.
Of all the code and data Microsoft ships on the Windows XP CD-ROM,
only about half is used in any particular user's
configuration. What we say about Windows XP may or may not be quite
true about Windows XP as it's installed on your
system.
For example, there's a setting in Control Panel
Folder Options that
instructs Windows to open icons with either a double-click or a
single-click, according to your preference. While most users tend to
prefer the double-click option, and double-clicking is the default on
most systems, your system might be different (it might even be the
default, depending on the operating system you had installed
previously). Although both setups are clearly defined in Chapter 2, some procedures elsewhere in this book
will instruct you to double-click where you may only need to
single-click. This "knowledge gap"
is an unfortunate consequence of the malleable nature of the Windows
operating system.
Consider another oddity in Windows XP: categories in Control Panel.
This new addition in Windows XP (discussed further in Chapter 2) splits the components of the Control Panel
into distinct categories, rather than simply listing them
alphabetically, as in previous versions of Windows.
What's more, the Control Panel can be accessed in
any of three different ways (as a menu in the Start menu, as a
standalone folder window, or as an entry in the folder tree in
Windows Explorer), and the category interface (which can be disabled
completely, if desired) is used only in some cases. This means that
it's difficult (and laborious) to predict when
you'll need to open the "Appearance
and Themes" category before you can get to the
Display Properties dialog. We've compensated for
this ambivalence by enclosing the category name in
"maybe" brackets, like this:
Control Panel [Appearance
and Themes] Display
Properties.
Also, for all the statements (from Microsoft and others) that Windows
XP is "integrated" and
"seamless," the fact is that the
system is actually amazingly modular, customizable, and
"seamy." This is a good thing. This
book shows a lot of different ways to modify Windows XP to suit your
needs, a theme that is expanded further in the
Windows XP
Annoyances for Geeks (O'Reilly), also by
David A. Karp. This almost infinite customizability and modularity of
Windows XP means that many of our statements about the
productsuch as saying that the My Computer window has an icon
for Control Panel, or that the Desktop corresponds to the
\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop
folder, or that Windows XP is faster than Windows Memay,
strictly speaking, be false, or at least serious oversimplifications.
Basically, Windows XP is a platform and set of capabilities, not a
single stable product with a fixed set of features. In this book, we
give you the information you need to tap into all of Windows
XP's capabilities, not just those that are showcased
on Microsoft's web site or the Windows Desktop.
