Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Most computer architecture books are just too technical and complex. Focusing on specific technology, they often bypass the basics and are outdated as quickly as technology advances. Now, Irv Englander's gentle-but-thorough introduction to computer architecture and systems software provides just the right amount of technical detail you'll need to make successful decisions in your future career.

The text covers all the basics in an accessible, easy-to-understand way. Organized in a form that parallels an actual computer system, entire sections are devoted to principles of data, hardware, and software, with computer interconnection, clustering, and networking integrated into the material to emphasize the importance of computer and system structure. Assuming only basic knowledge, these sections build up to an in-depth understanding of each topic and how they interrelate to make up a computer system.

With this Third Edition's outstanding features, you'll be able to build a solid foundation for success on the job.

• All chapters have been thoroughly updated to reflect current technology.
• Revised with even clearer discussions of virtual storage, the operation of memory, and modern CPU architectures.
• Programming examples are written in a C++/Java-like pseudocode.
• Emphasizes the computer aspects of clustering and networking, rather than the data communication aspects.
• Provide an understanding of underlying, non-changing basics of computers, so that you can make knowledgeable decisions about systems.
• Introduce new technological concepts without overwhelming you with too much detail.
• Examples cover a broad spectrum of hardware and software systems, from personal computers to mainframes.
• Integrates discussions of hardware and software throughout, and explores the symbiosis between them.

Average Customer Rating:

Not good for learning

Customer Rating:

This was required reading for an online IT college course. I'm an experienced IT professional and I had a very hard time with this book. the language is very difficult to follow and the examples/illustrations only made sense after I learned the concept from other texts/websites. This isn't a book from which to learn, if you do not already understand these concepts. I did not complete the book, as it only caused frustration.

Seriously Lacking - Buy a different book if you can

Customer Rating:

This was a required text for a computer science course I am taking. I've gone through half the book already and I get more and more confused as I go. There are a lot of nice pictures that I assume are meant to be funny, but other than that, you're not getting much. This book lacks clear explanations for each topic. While there is a lot of text, you'll be hard pressed to find anything you can make sense out of. This book lacks quality examples. Though the examples it does have are helpful, there are not enough. When you get to the exercises at the end of each chapter you find that the questions seek answers to ideas that often were not covered or not covered well enough or lacked examples. This book is so bad, there have been emails going around among almost all of my classmates, and even the professor had his 2 cents, and hopefully the course will use a different textbook for the next semester. Don't waste your money on it!

Confusing and hard to understand

Customer Rating:

As others have pointed out, this is definitely not a book for beginners. But what's worse is that its not very well written. The phrases and sentences are sometimes confusing. While some appear to be good examples, usually they are not well explained. I hate to be this harsh, but the book often has sentences for the sake of having sentences! I would not recommend this book to anyone other than someone who wants a quick reference of IS architecture. There are other books that do a better job of explaining this subject.

Bridging the Gap	Customer Rating:
As a student taking a technical look at computers from a non technical background this book dances the fine line of too little detail, and being too technical. I recomend it highly, and use it frequently as a reference around the office.

Too hard!	Customer Rating:
The is the required textbook for one of my papers( i was doing Software Engineering program), I found it is hard to understand and there are few example, even if there are some examples, i just cannot understand,quite confusing! I finally gave up that paper and changed to another program :P Maybe you should find this book quite easy. It's not my cup of tea though!