Network Your Computers & Devices Step By Step is a book that explains the various aspects of home networking in Windows 7 in a step by step format, with proper screenshots. It also touches upon sharing between Windows 7 and other operating systems like Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and other Windows versions.
The book is written by my good friend Ciprian Rusen who runs the 7Tutorials blog. When he informed me that O’Reilly has decided to publish his book, I was pleasantly surprised. O’Reilly is the foremost publisher of computer books, not only in the US but around the world. Hence getting a book published with them is definitely a big achievement. The book starts with the basics of home networking and how you can set up router and devices. It also goes into the specifics of configuring a Belkin N+ wireless router and D-Link DIR-615 router. It then goes into setting up user accounts, and also setting up libraries for Windows 7, a topic many of the users will find useful. Later, the book goes through the process of network creation, correctly setting up the sharing settings, creating a homegroup (we have talked about setting up a homegroup in Windows 7 previously), sharing libraries, folder, devices and working with them within the network. In the last few chapters, it explores interoperability and talks about sharing network between various operating systems. It also talks about securing your network, and setting up parental controls for monitoring the kids. What differentiates this book for most of the other such books that I have read, is the language of explanation and the accompanied screenshots. Ciprian has written everything in very easy to understand, sans tech jargon, language. Even people who don’t consider themselves tech savvy and find it difficult to even think about setting up the home network themselves, can go through the instructions in this book and get started. If you enjoy reading tech blogs (like ours 🙂 ), and love this presentation format where things are explained in steps with images showing what the step is all about, you would like going through this book. It’s very detailed (almost 500 pages!) and can be bought from O’Reilly’s online catalog. If you are a Windows 7 user looking to understand home networking, how to get it done effectively and its various other aspects, I highly recommend that you get this book. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.