Well, you win a few and you lose a few. I think this boo is one of the cheapest, tackiest and most amateurish books on computing that I have ever seen.

A full quarter of it is devoted to such subjects as how to key in programs (remember to press the Return key at the end of every line), with whole paragraphs on the Shift Lock key, the Commodore key and other such trivia. This information is available in the first few pages of the Commodore user manual and I can see no justification for repeating it here.

The so-called 'programs' are in fact very short routines, in one case only three lines long. They do amazingly intricate things like display "Commodore is fantastic" on the screen, or allow you to key in your name so that the computer can say hello. The longest 'game' is 43 lines and is an elementary wordsearch puzzle.

The text has not been typeset, but as an economy measure it has simply been photographed from Commodore dot matrix printout. The result is patchy, faint in places and generally not at all easy to read. Even within the 64 pages there is a fair bit of padding with illustrations and screenshots, so overall you get very little for your money.

I'm afraid I can't really think of much that's positive to say about this book. Although it is clearly aimed at beginners it is much more elementary than it need be, it is a misnomer to call 10-line routines 'games' and I feel that anyone who even shells out £1.95 for it is likely to be very disappointed.