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I was almost falling asleep by the time the launch event came to a close, when Gates suddenly started wrapping things up. A PowerPoint slide filled the massive video screens behind him, and my eyes refocused, and a smile came to my face. Gates was talking about the best features in Windows XP, and listed on the slide above him were the following bullet points:

• Real-time communications
• Mobile Computing
• Help and support
• Digital photography
• Digital music
• Digital video
• Home networking

I was smiling because I had just proposed the book you're now reading to Hungry Minds, which has since become part of the Wiley family. Hungry Minds had also published my previous book, Great Windows XP Digital Media, which covers about half of the topics on the Gates slide mentioned above. This book, Windows XP Home Networking, neatly covers the other half.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Even Bill Gates himself apparently agrees that the digital media and networking technologies in Windows XP are the best reasons to upgrade. And that, really, is what this is all about. You can create home networks (and work with various digital media technologies) with previous Windows versions, but it isn't as good. It isn't as fun. And it certainly isn't as easy. The further you go back in time, in fact, the harder and more technical these tasks become.

And technical means boring. If you have to know how to manually assign IP address and DNS settings, perform port forwarding, or configure technologies with bizarre names like NAT, then the topic we're discussing is for experts only. And frankly, experts don't need or want a book about home networking anyway. They're weenies.

I used to write books for weenies. Heck, I used to be a weenie. But part of maturing and growing up is that you learn to put things in perspective. And my current perspective is that technology isn't the reason I write about these topics. No, I write about these topics because of what the technology enables.

Let me give you an example. Since adding wireless networking to my home, my wife and I can browse the Web, read email, or do anything else that we used to do from a desktop computer, using a wireless-enabled laptop or Tablet PC. The difference is, we can do it from the couch, or from bed, or from the back yard even. We could even use it from the bathroom if we wanted to, though no one is owning up to that particular scenario. The point here is that the wireless technology isn't what's cool. The good part is what you can do with it.

Here's another example. Let's say you want to share photos with family members on the opposite coast. In the past, you might have ordered double prints and sent them via snail mail when the pictures came back from the photo developer. Today, you can hook your digital camera to the PC, acquire the images, resize them if needed, email select pictures to your family, and the use Windows Messenger to chat about them in real time. And it all happens nearly simultaneously. Again, the technology itself isn't what's cool. It's what you do with that technology that makes it worthwhile.

Simple networking is changing the computer from an office-based productivity tool to a more pervasive, life-enhancing phenomenon.

Remember, it's all in how you look at it.

Paul Thurrott
June 13, 2002

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