This guide describes maintenance procedures for IBM and Apple personal computers, provides information on detecting and diagnosing problems, and details diagnostic programs. Included are discussions of printers, terminals, disks, disk drives, keyboards, hardware, and software. The text is supplemented by various diagrams. (EW)

Discussion of factors to consider in purchasing a personal computer covers present and future needs, computing environments, memory, processing performance, disk size, and display quality. Issues such as bundled systems, where and when to purchase, and vendor support are addressed; and an annotated bibliography of 28 recent articles is included.…