Book: Macs Portable Genius Author: Paul McFedries Publisher: Wiley Publishing Inc. ISBN: 978-0-470-29052-1 Pages: ?? Price: $25 Level: Intermediate to Advanced Rating: 5 out of 5 Apples

There's something immediately reassuring about the cover (above) of this Mac help book. Standing beneath the title, against an all white background, is a young man with tousled hair, crossed arms and just a hint of a smile. The black tee he's wearing identifies him as a "Portable Genius" and an iPod hangs around his neck. He looks friendly, approachable, and very confident.

And now, sitting on my bookcase, he's mine to have and to hold, to teach me tips and shortcuts, to help me prevent common problems and to solve many of those that arise when poltergeists move into my MacBook Pro during the night.

The double spaced text has a clean look and is easy to read; color and large fonts clearly mark section headings. Key sentences are highlighted in blue and set off with an orange "Note" or "Genius" icon. There's a helpful illustration on almost every page.

The book assumes that the reader is familiar with the basics.

A look at the table of contents quickly reveals how useful this book can be. It begins with "How Do I Connect and Configure Devices," and ends with "How Do I Run Windows on My Mac." In between are chapters on synchronizing, communicating, organizing your life, both on and offline, Mac maintenance and upgrades, and solving both hardware and software problems.

The first chapter, while filled with useful facts and photos, wasn't exactly a grabber. I'm simply not the type of person who can read a sentence like the following without going cross-eyed:

"Use the Apple DVI to Video Adapter to connect your DVI Mac to an external display's Composite or S-Video port."

Chapter two provides information for configuring a Mac's Bluetooth capabilities, thus helping us untangle the jumble of cables under our desks. I've put a wireless mouse at the top of my holiday wish list, so I'm hoping I'll need to refer back to this chapter soon.

I'm embarrassed by how much I learned in Chapter 4: How Can I Get More Out of the Web? You no doubt know that you can email an entire web page in Safari by going to File -> Mail Contents of This Page (or by typing Command+i). This simple keystroke will open a new message in Mail and insert the page into the body of the message ... much more efficient than the Copy -> Open new message in Mail -> Paste procedure I had been doing. But did you also know that you can run a Google search for a word or phrase instantly in Safari by typing Command-Shift-L? This simple command automatically adds the text to the Google search box and runs the search without further ado.

In the following chapter, "How Do I Use My Mac to Organize My Real Life," I learned how to create smart groups in my Address Book and also how to automatically send birthday greetings using Automator. These tips alone justified the cost of the book.

In short, Macs Portable Genius is a visually appealing book that will help you get more out of your Mac by learning how to access all the really powerful and timesaving features that aren't obvious at a casual glance.