                              Wicked Books
                              for Windows

                             by Tony Curro

    This month I take a look at two books for Windows. The books are
    wicked, but in a nice way. Wicked Windows, and Wicked Sounds for
    Windows, both released by Abacus, come with a diskette. The first is
    a collection of puzzles, pranks and games for Windows users. The
    second is a collection of WAV files for Windows.

    Wicked Windows
    by Paul Symanski

    Has a wide assortment of pranks. Some of them  include:

    Dripper -- Water Torture with sound effects.
    Bricklayer -- Have your desktop completely bricked over.
    Flipper -- gives a mirror image of screen by turning it around.
    Pied Piper -- Use cheese to lure rats, and then trap them.
    
    Games include:

    HangWin -- Hangman for Windows.
    NumMagic -- get those lucky lottery numbers.
    
    An enjoyable book of pranks. Each is fully documented, and there is
    a list of filenames in each section. These would be fun to set up on
    an unsuspecting person. I also found the glossary very informative.
    Do you really know the meaning of PC phrases and abbreviations? Some
    from the book:

    DOS -- Destroy Our Sanity
    HIMEM.SYS -- Misspelling of 'HIMOM.SYS'
    Kilobyte -- One kilo of bytes
    LCD -- Abbreviation for 'Like, Cool Dude'
    WIN.INI -- Windows Initialization file. This file is used to crash
    Windows after installing a new program.
    And on...and on...and on....
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    Wicked Sounds for Windows
    by Petrowski and Stolz

    This is a collection of 45 sound files. This book has a disk that
    contains  all the files, and the source code. The source code is
    also in the book it great detail.  Programmers will enjoy this as
    they can learn, and create their own files.

    Application features:

    Sound Database -- which helps you keep track of the sounds. Add
    sounds for playback and insert commentary in these sounds.
    
    Playlist function -- so you can play back sounds in the background.
    
    Windows event manager -- operates from the Wicked Sounds for Windows
    database. Adds six sound events to the existing default events,
    giving you a total of twelve events. Viewing the source code for
    WSW, you'll get some ideas on adding your own events.

    Some of the sound files are very short. However, I found most of the
    sounds interesting, and use them daily.

    Both books are a good buy, and for programmers, Wicked Sounds, can
    be a learning tool.


                          Product Information

                             Wicked Windows

                          List Price -- $19.95

                             Wicked Sounds

                          List Price -- $29.95

                                 Abacus
                            5370 52nd St. NE
                         Grand Rapids, MI 49512
