Issue23 / Geek Goddess

How To Be a Geek Goddess: Practical advice for using computers with smarts and style

How to Be a Geek Goddess

by Christina Tynan-Wood

December 2008, 344 pages

ISBN: 1-59327-187-9

$24.95

I began reading “How To Be a Geek Goddess” while traveling to visit family and friends who were not technically inclined. I was surrounded by people who did not know their desktop nor laptop make nor model, let alone the actual specs. Within this context, the Geek Goddess book was a highly useful tool.

I found myself marking pages to share with these friends. I marked the section on security software for a friend who is constantly sabotaging her desktop's ability to fend off viruses.

I marked nearly every page in Chapter 5 for a friend who shops online, and we enjoyed looking at some of the new leads together. I read parts of Chapter 11 to a grandma who takes great pleasure in communicating with friends through blogs and email.

In general, the book was quite useful for the non-techy crowd.

Admittedly, there was little in the book that was appropriate for me. I already know how to set up a desktop (and can build one with my eyes closed), but I am not the book's audience.

My friends are the audience, the massive population of non-geeky; even a-technical people are the intended audience. Geek Goddess appeals to women who are seeking the savvy that is currently beyond their reach.

Geek Goddess has a tremendous amount of humor, and a highly personal writer's voice. For the mainstream, this is the ideal approach.

Personally, I found the stereotypes unnecessary and distracting, but my less technical friends, when I read it to them, found this approach comforting. Go figure.

The number of people using Linux - Ubuntu in particular - is growing so quickly that incorporating new users with grace, especially the a-technical ones, is not an easy task.

In reading this book and writing this review, I am choosing to focus on the positive – if this book helps some women take ownership of their computing power more seriously, then kudos to the author.

Maybe, in her next printing, she'll expand her section “Apple or Windows?” to include Ubuntu. It would have been a smart choice for her to include it in the current printing. Ubuntu is easy enough to install, and even easier to use.

My daughter did her first clean install of Ubuntu at five years old. A neighbor complained that he couldn't possibly use Linux because “it's too hard”.

When we got home, my daughter asked if she could try installing it. We wiped one of the desktops (which had been doing Windows / Ubuntu performance benchmark tests), and handed her an install CD.

She couldn't read all the instructions, so she asked her six year old brother, “What does this say?” They pressed Enter until the install was complete.

So, dear Christine Tynan-Wood, trust me – Ubuntu is easy enough to use, and should be included in your book's next printing as a delightfully easy operating system.

Here, I'll even write the first line for her: “Ubuntu, Apple or Windows? Deciding which operating system to use is one of the easiest decisions you will make.

Pick the one that works best - currently Ubuntu - with the others lagging as a distant second or third choice to be used only if you must...”