A team made up of the sometime editor of a magazine with all the answers and one of its contributors should be well qualified to act as micro guides. After all, they know the questions that everyone wants to know the answers to.

In fact, articles from past editions of Computer Answers have been cut out, cut up and put through the grinder with permitted additives and colouring. The material consists largely of adapted and updated Spectrum pieces from CA.

The book is one of four guides - to the Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC and Atari XL - all sharing the same encyclopaedic style. Much of the information is also common to all four, leavened with coverage of topics specific to the machine of the title. The text is well presented and the style is eminently readable.

Subjects are dealt with in alphabetical order from analogue through to word processor. Sub-sections are headed with a vibrant primrose tint as though someone had gone through with a yellow marker pen, and it colours the plentiful diagrams and listings, too. The routines mean you can learn about your machine by doing things, as well as by reading about them.

This is an authoritative, easy to use handbook/reference guide to the Spectrum.

Harriet Arnold