Like most competitors, this book discusses the PC at the subsystem level, and is associated with the video card, hard-disk interfaces, memory, and other pieces of the componentry puzzle that hardware integrators need to figure out. The authors do a great job to explain the difference between (and relative merits of) IDE and SCSI hard-drive interfaces, various video buses, competing processors, and other technologies. They also prove themselves adept at explaining general assembly procedures and problem solving strategies. This book distinguishes itself from competitors by emphasizing the most popular opinions of the authors' on hardware products. It's refreshing to see authors recommend Product A for high performance systems where the price is not an issue, Product B for economical home systems, and Product C for organizational workstation. (Web Site, on the other hand, not including high-quality tutorial book on designing and assembling the machine from scratch.) Even the photographs that appear in this book - traditionally a weak point among hardware books - are clear.