Best Books on Computer Hardware

When you want to understand how computer hardware works and how to fix and upgrade it, I’ve found only one author who generally understood the engineering, was comprehensive, and was a clear writer for intelligent readers.

Bulletin: I think this book author, Scott Mueller, is dead. I think that’s why no new editions of his books have come out in years. His publisher emailed me this statement: “there will be no new edition for ‘Upgrading & Repairing PCs’.” They didn’t say why, just that the series has ended, and it’s been a few years since the last edition. I asked his publisher’s press office but they didn’t answer. An alternative possibility explaining his absence is that he turned out to be so bad an author that his publisher dropped him for new work, but, in my opinion, that’s unlikely. I’m not sure he died. I haven’t found a clear announcement that unambiguously identifies this particular Scott Mueller, the author of computer books, as having died. There is an online announcement of the death of one person with that name. But Googling the Web finds other people with the same name, so which Scott Mueller died is unknown. But it is interesting that his website is no longer functional, his namesake domain went away, and I couldn’t reach him by email anymore. That’s not complete proof, but these seem to be clues.

Scott Mueller wrote books I understood and they appeared to cover more than most other authors try to. You could read online articles, but having all of the important content in one book with an index and all written by one expert author is an asset, especially if you’ve lost your Internet connection. I like Upgrading and Repairing PCs, which has had many editions and often runs over 1,000 pages long. The author also covered Microsoft Windows. If you’re using an old computer, you can save money by getting a used edition that was published shortly after your computer was made, as it’ll likely have the most information about your computer type. But a newer edition may also have old information on an optical disc in the book (if you’re buying a used book, be sure the optical disc is included). If you owned a new edition you could ask questions on his forum on the Web, where he had weighed in often, but that’s not available anymore.