Many people have to learn just enough about Microsoft Excel to get by on the job. As a result, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve greeted the news that they need to learn to create spreadsheets with all the enthusiasm they’d have for a job scraping chewing gum off the sidewalk in front of a school.
Is a spreadsheet really an alien minefield filled with toxic waste? Can a book explain Microsoft Excel in terms that make it not only easy to understand but easy to use? Microsoft Excel 2010 Step By Step was written for that purpose. Let’s take a look and see how well the author - Curtis D. Frye - succeeded.

Today you can find lots of software which helps remove programs and clean up leftover files, folders and registry settings. In theory this is a good thing, as it helps eliminate some of the bloat on your Windows computer. But are these solutions really effective at removing all traces? To find out, I tested some of the most popular applications in this niche, both free and commercial. Let’s see what I discovered.

I learned to cook when I was very young, and it always seemed easy and natural to me. I couldn’t figure out why my father never learned to cook, since he was a highly educated man and cooking was so easy. I figured out later on that people need to have things explained to them in a way that makes sense, and apparently cookbooks didn’t make sense to my dad. Now there’s a book called Cooking for Geeks. Do "geeks" (which in this case means people who think more in scientific and technological terms) really need their own cookbook? As someone who understands both technology and cooking, I was very interested to find out.

Panda is a company who’s products were reviewed in our Security for Everyone series since our first episodes. So far it has performed well and received pretty good reviews from us. This year they launched their 2012 versions of products and we were very curious to learn if they remain competitive or not. Finally, we managed to find the time to review Panda Internet Security 2012. Let’s see how well it fared in our tests.

In a previous article about Windows 8, we unwillingly started a big debate about the ribbon and its efficiency. Some people do not like the fact that Windows 8 uses it more widely than Windows 7 and complain that it is less efficient compared to the older interface from Windows XP. In order to continue the debate using facts instead of subjective opinions, we decided to make a benchmark and compare the efficiency of the ribbon, as it is used in Windows 8 versus the interface we are all familiar with from Windows XP. Let’s see the results.

WordPress is one of many popular platforms for blogs, and its support site confidently says that it’s one of the easiest to set up and run. If that’s really the case, is there any need for a book to explain how it works? The editors at Wiley think so. Let’s see whether WordPress for Dummies is a book a blogger needs to read.

Windows Explorer has been a weak-spot of both Windows Vista and Windows 7. Many users complained about it being inferior to the version used in Windows XP and a lot more frustrating to work with. Luckily, with Windows 8 things are improving a lot. After using Windows Explorer for a few days in Windows 8 Developer Preview, i can say that it rocks. It is a real pleasure to work with. Here’s twelve reasons why:

ESET has been in the business of protecting computers for more than two decades. They have received and very high number of Advanced+ awards from AV Comparatives and continue to be a trusted solution for more than 100 million consumers worldwide. I, however, have never used ESET and hope a fresh perspective will prove helpful to you. In this review I will be looking at ESET Smart Security 5 to see how effective it is and what verdict it deserves, compared with the other products we reviewed in the Security for Everyone series.

There’s an old saying, "When all else fails, read the directions." Unfortunately, software and hardware don’t come with much in the way of "directions" these days. Help files are often not helpful, and if you have to read the manual on your computer, what happens when the computer doesn’t work? There are several series of self-help books that claim to fill the void left by the disappearance of printed manuals. Are they worth reading? Are some better than others? Let’s see in this battle of the books, which series is better: For Dummies from Wiley or Step by Step from Microsoft Press?

Check Point, the company behind ZoneAlarm, has aggressively pursued Internet security since 1993. In 2004 the acquisition of ZoneAlarm allowed protection against virus and spyware threats to share the spotlight with the very well received Check Point firewall. ZoneAlarm was last reviewed on 7 Tutorials with version 2010 and missed the Grandma rating due largely to cumbersome or complicated configuration issues. In this review we will see where ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2012 has taken us.

The more Microsoft improves their software, the more features each program has. The added features may mean the software is easier to use, or it may mean that there are just that many more things to click on and get confused by. Or both those statements can be equally true. Especially when one’s talking about Microsoft Office 2010. Because of its features and complexity, there are a lot of books that claim to explain Office 2010, and Microsoft Office 2010 for Dummies is among them. It shares the lighthearted tone and clear explanations found in all the For Dummies books, but is it the one you should buy to help you find your way around Office 2010?

Nearly every home computer is attached to a network of some kind these days. While it has gotten much easier to set up and connect to a network than it used to be, it still feels like a difficult and mostly incomprehensible area of "mystery computing" to a lot of people. Since most of us have to deal with networks, a guide that makes the whole subject easy to understand can be a real lifesaver. We’ve reviewed other networking books and found them very helpful. Will Home Networking All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies be another good book to add to your reference library? Let's find out.