Upgrading and Repairing PCs is now on its 11th Edition, and it just keeps growing. It's now 400 pages longer than the tenth edition, which was itself 1,200 pages. Much of the book covers areas of historical reference that are still relevant, like the ISA bus, but its size means there's plenty of room to cover new advances as well.

The book starts with the processor chapter, leaving the nuts and bolts of upgrading to later. Intel chipsets are exhaustively covered, but full details of AMD's Athlon were under a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) at the time of going to press, so information about this is absent.

As well as these fast-moving sectors of the industry, the more stable areas are also covered well. For instance, the SCSI standards table now stretches across two pages. The move from ISA to PCI is covered in several areas, and it's good to see that the reference to optical and removable storage has been bolstered; there's a tabulated summary of the world of recordable DVD standards, different CD media and the meanings of their 'colours'.

The upgrading chapter is both a step-by-step guide and a summary of the preceding 23 chapters. There are diagrams and drawings to help guide you. Add to this the pictures of the necessary tools and you can do as the title of the book suggests; but it isn't suitable for beginners. The book is rounded off with software troubleshooting and OS idiosyncrasies.

For added value, there is one CD included. These contain the sixth, eighth and tenth editions of the book in PDF format, and there are also two useful apps from PowerQuest: PartitionMagic 4 and Drive Image 3. These aren't the full versions, but are still useful.

There are only two faults with this book: first, the moving of BIOS error codes to the CD only, so a PC is necessary to view them; and second, digital cameras are entirely overlooked. Even if cameras are both distantly related to scanners and unrelated to PC repair, it's an industry that's evolving rapidly. NDAs, corporate dithering and the pace of development prevent the book from being totally up to date, but this guide - and the author's laid-back yet knowledgeable style - remain the standard by which similar books are judged.