Date: 9 Sep 93 01:39 -0600 From: Rob Slade Subject: "Portable Communications" by Banks BKPRTCOM.RVW 930804 Prentice Hall, Inc./Brady 113 Sylvan Avenue Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 (515) 284-6751 FAX (515) 284-2607 11711 N. College Ave. Carmel, IN 46032-9903 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY 10023 800-428-5331 Portable communications, Banks, 1992, 0-13-524364-5, U$19.95 There is not an awful lot in this book which addresses the "portable" side of computer communications. Nor is there much of a "survival guide" for the travelling executive; not unless you travel with an electrician. The material contained herein is a general treatment of the hardware that you will need to connect to commercial online information services. (There are three things the discerning reader will discover about Michael Banks in this book. He is a science fiction author. He is a hardware freak. He probably owns stock in Radio Shack.) (By the way, don't go looking for science fiction *books* by him. A quick "online" search with the nearest six library districts with modem access failed to turn up anything.) Less than half of chapter one, "Defining the Field", is devoted to definitions of aspects of "telecomputing". "Laptop Basics of Telecomputing", in chapter two, is a fairly generic discussion of what you might look for in an MS-DOS computer. Little of the material relates specifically to laptops. Chapter three gives some information on modems and standards, and, more briefly, faxes and cellular telephones. Chapter four talks about communications software. Most of the programs listed are dedicated "front end" software for commercial online services rather than generalized terminal emulation software. Very little examination of features is conducted. "Portable Communications Support Software" lists some archiving and compression software (no "binary to text" programs for transmission of program files via email are mentioned), and then talks about general utilities. Again, very little of the material relates to portability. Part two is entitled "Making the Connection"; chapter five via modem, chapter six via "null" modems and cable interfacing. In fact, both chapters deal primarily with cabling. (A warning to those tempted to follow Michael's advice to try to "hard wire" into hotel phones: I'd suggest a piece of equipment he neglected. A Polaroid camera, so that you can get everything back together again the same way you took it apart.) The sections dealing with specific modem commands might be suspect: please confirm them with your own modem manual. Part three, "Applications", has chapters which attempt to deal with faxes, commercial online services, "tips" (miscellaneous) and "What's Ahead". Appendices list hardware and software companies. (Oh. And books. One is another book of Michael's, the other is a book about Compuserve.) For the newcomer to computer communications, the book does cover a variety of important topics. Much, however, is left without coverage. BBSes are mentioned, but primarily as a "test bed" for getting used to new hardware and software. No mention is made of Fidonet or Netmail. No mention is made of the Internet or Usenet at all. Mail readers and "wandering" UUCP make these latter systems quite useful in portable communications. Much in the book could be corrected. (I didn't know DOS 4 *had* any advantages; I thought even DOS 1 recognized file areas bigger than 32K.) Given the date of 1992, it is odd that Bahks missed the "skip" from 2400 bps to 14,400, mostly missing 9600 bps. It is also odd that he discusses MNP4 (error correction) but not MNP5 (data compression) which has become more popular as a modem feature. I am also surprised at his contention that archiving software saves files from corruption. Certainly corruption will be detected when de- archiving occurs, but correction is usually impossible. The book could certainly use some reorganization. It could also use renaming. For someone interested in using a commercial online service, and who might also want to travel, this work contains useful information. It also contains a lot of extraneous details. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKPRTCOM.RVW 930804 Permission granted to distribute with uneditted copies of the Telecom Digest and associated mailing lists/newsgroups. Vancouver Institute for Research into User Security, Canada V7K 2G6 Robert_Slade@sfu.ca ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@cue.bc.ca Fidonet 1:153/733 p1@CyberStore.ca 604-526-3676