Mike,

Rich and spent the entire weekend going to bookstores, skimming missing manuals and researching David Pogue.  After we looked it over, we somewhat independently came to the same conclusions.

The Missing Manual series is a nice blend of basic material with some depth here and there.  We both feel comfortable writing in the style of the missing manuals.   It might take some time to get one chapter rewritten into Pogue-form, but once that has been mastered, the work on the rest of the chapters should be relatively straightforward.

We are a bit concerned that the formula for the missing manual is about a product and wireless/home networking is not precisely a product.  What is indeed missing, is the manual showing how all the dispartite tools are used together to assemble a home network.

Obviously Pogue keeps a pretty close eye on his series so we might as well get him involved in the discussions in terms of things like the title and table of contents.  We don't want to go too far before he sees things.

We see a case for either a Wireless Networking or a Wired+Wireless Networking missing manual but feel that the broder topic is the better choice (and is what we have already written).

Both Windows-XP Home: The Missing Manual (Chapters 17-19) and Mac OS-X: The Missing Manual (chapters 12, 18 - 21) have significant on networking coverage from the use.  Choosing an ISP, basic wiring, basic wireless, basic networking, diagnosing network problems are covered more lightly.

In our book proposal, Chapters 1-4,6, and the Appendices fill the gaps in the two missing manuals well.  Chapter 5 is already covered better in Pogue's book - this could be removed, or some of the content from Pogue's book could be repurposed (shortened significantly) here with a strong reference to the other two MM's.

There would be an overall spin which was needed - but we were going to have to respin things anyways with the XP/OS-X focus.

Probably the biggest weakness with Wired and Wireless Networking: The Missing Manual will be that it is NOT about a single product, and there will be places which are not purely tutorial in nature.

But if Pogue likes the idea of a MM that is not about one product, then I think that we are golden.   Overall, while making an MM may be slightly more time consuming, it is not more than 10-15% more than the rework that we already needed to do.

We might want to tweak the table of contents a bit, but we should first identify the overall scope direction...

/Chuck