As the industry gears up for the release of Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, computer book publishers' fall releases also show strength in several other areas, including a few surprises.

Windows is a big topic, of course, with well over 20 titles submitted for our listings, including something from every major house, months before the software release. But as important as Windows will be to the industry, it's not the only big topic, and perhaps not even the most populous. Linux and other Open Source software have had surprising longevity in the market, and consequently continue to draw publishers' interest. Keith Weiskamp, co-founder of the Coriolis Group, tells PW, "Open Source, and Linux in particular, is interesting because, like Java, it has been dominant in its time. Unlike Java, however, which was promoted by its inventor, Sun, Linux has been around a long time and gained its adherents by word of mouth. These users are loyal."

Current events are having an influence on forthcoming lists, too. MP3 and the flap over digital delivery of music via the Internet have spawned McGraw-Hill's I Want My MP3! (Oct.) by Bill Mann and IDG's MP3 for Dummies (Sept.) by Andy Rathbone; meanwhile, Muska & Lipman is extending the idea of sending radio-like programming over the Web with Broadcasting Online Radio (Jan.) by Ben Sawyer and Dave Greely.

This month several financial markets are extending their hours for trades made online -- and publishers as large as Microsoft (September's Online Investing by Jon Markman) and as small as Trafalgar Square(Investing on the Internet [Sept.] by Scott Western) are responding with how-to-do-it books; the back-office and administration side is covered in E-Business (Jan.) by Nahid Jilovec, coming from 29th Street Press.

The wild popularity of buying and selling anything online, has prompted eBay the Smart Way (Oct.) by Joseph Sinclair, from Amacom, and a new edition from Prima of Online Auctions at eBay (Sept.).

Another interesting development this fall is the number of non-technical tech books (that is, books on a subject that requires a little technical understanding, but are not manual-like) coming from some big names in the business.

Among Internet names, it's harder to be bigger than Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. His Weaving the Web, due in October from Harper San Francisco, tells how and why he went about setting up the Web.

"A lot of Web users have asked me the same kinds of questions, why I did what I did," he says, "and there is a limit to what you can say in a FAQ, or even a journal or magazine article. I wanted the Web to be as creative and as free as possible -- basically, anything you can conceive, you can do on the Web. The book allows me to explain that in more depth."

The sense of personal involvement in software is an important part of a title by Robert Young, founder of Red Hat (of Linux fame), out next month from Coriolis Group. "We called it Under the Radar because in the beginning the number of Linux users was so small it wouldn't show up on Microsoft's radar," Weiskamp reports. "Then, when users saw they could really have an effect on the writing of the software, they began to accept it in large numbers." The radar would have to aim pretty high to miss now.

Clifford Stoll, well-known computer gadfly, takes on the issue of computers in the classroom in Doubleday's High-Tech Heretic (Oct.), and explains why in some places, high-tech is more a burden than a boon.

Another timely title, McGraw-Hill's The Power of Now by Vivek Ranadive (Sept.), explores companies' use of digital processes in finding markets and defining and responding to change.

There is even a tell-all book or two, including Times Books's High Stakes, No Prisoners (Oct.) by Charles Furguson, which recounts of the author's "experience of greed and glory" doing business in Silicon Valley; and TV Books presents another view of the history of the Internet in Nerds 2.01 (Sept.) by Stephen Segaller.

These are just a few of the topics that caught PW's eye in compiling the following listings -- a selection of titles for all levels of expertise and interest.