Ken Uston's illustrated guides. (book reviews) Russ Lockwood.

Ken Uston, in-famous black-jack and PacMan player, has written a series of books for the total computer neophyte. The guides are currently available for the Macintosh, Commodore 64, Apple IIe, IBM PC, Kaypro, Compaq, and Coleco Adam. We promise to keep our search and replace jokes to a minimum.

Seriously, each book presents an overview of the particular computer, and perhaps more important, provides a quick tutorial on related programs. While we can nitpick about learning Basic programming in 15 minutes of designing a spreadsheet in 30 minutes, we think the books address questions and problems confronting first-time computer users.

The books generally divide into five major sections: system purchase and set-up, word processing, calculating and spreadsheets, telecommunications, and games and programming.

Review Grade: B+