Book excerpt: Need a crash course in the basics of operating and working with your Snow Leopard Mac? This 126-page guide will help teach you the ins and outs to get you up to speed and computing like a pro. The readers of Macworld are amazingly diverse. Among our audience are some incredibly tech-savvy folks, and we're glad to have them. There are also some people among us who are relatively novice Mac users, who avidly read what we write in order to flex and improve their Mac skills. For the past few years we've offered a book, the Mac Basics Superguide, that's been a hit with both audiences. And I'm happy to announce that we've just updated that book for Snow Leopard. If you're someone who's struggling with the basics of operating a Mac, or someone who's a new user of Mac OS X (perhaps you've made the switch from Windows to Mac) this new 126-page guide will get you up to speed. Written in an easy-to-follow style, the Mac Basics Superguide, Snow Leopard Edition will give you detailed tips and information about using the Finder and the Dock, switching between programs, using Apple's Spotlight search tool, opening and saving your files, and setting up system preferences and user accounts. We've tossed in some basic security and troubleshooting advice to keep your Mac up and running smoothly. And our own Dan Frakes, who pens our Mac Gems blog and magazine column, has assembled a list of 20 great low-cost programs that will enhance your Mac experience. But I said this book was for the Mac experts among us, too. Here's what I mean by that: It's the book you give to the people you know who need a leg up on using their Mac-all of your friends and family members who use you as the be-all, end-all Mac resource. The reality is, a Mac expert can only be in one place at any given time. This book can always be around as a handy reference when there's no flesh-and-blood expert nearby. (I sent my mom a copy of the first edition of this book, and I like to think it's reduced the number of questions she asks of me.) You Mac experts out there might also appreciate the writers who contributed to this book: Christopher Breen, Dan Frakes, Glenn Fleishman, Rob Griffiths, Joe Kissell, Ted Landau, Harry McCracken, and Kirk McElhearn.