Microsoft Books

I have three Office 2000 books. If I had to recommend a good one for learning the basics to beginners-this is the one. It covers the fundementals of Word, Excel, Power Point (slide presentations) Outlook (E-mail, appointments, calenders), the basics of Publisher (publications-newsletters, brochures), and Front Page (Web pages). Even if you are not real familiar with the Office software-this is a good place to start. The book is illustrated with clear, color pictures which are accompied by step-by step instructions. I find that it was a lot easier to read as compared to the technically-oriented books. (I am not a technical person). Along the margins of the book-there are tips, warnings and shortcuts which are very helpful. For all the non-techies like me-this is a good start.

I am new to the Office 2000 suite of products, and this Easy book helped me get an overall grasp of Office 2000. It covers more topical information in a visual format than any other book out there.

I have three Office 2000 books. If I had to recommend a good one for learning the basics to beginners-this is the one. It covers the fundementals of Word, Excel, Power Point (slide presentations) Outlook (E-mail, appointments, calenders), the basics of Publisher (publications-newsletters, brochures), and Front Page (Web pages). Even if you are not real familiar with the Office software-this is a good place to start. The book is illustrated with clear, color pictures which are accompied by step-by step instructions. I find that it was a lot easier to read as compared to the technically-oriented books. (I am not a technical person). Along the margins of the book-there are tips, warnings and shortcuts which are very helpful. For all the non-techies like me-this is a good start.

I really enjoyed this book - it took just 3 or 4 hours to read, and that included experimenting with all the features that the book introduced. This book tells everything one needs to know to write a basic web page.

Great examples of real applications. His method of transference is one of ease, if you pay attention! Before finishing it, I was using several tidbits that had been doging me at work...

My boss sent me home early on a Friday with the instructions to take the wife out to dinner on him! Is this book worth it? What do you think?

I recommend this book highly.

The Excel spreadsheet software includes many capabilities most people do not think about when they use Excel for general business purposes. In this useful book, the author presents 16 complete examples from day-to-day electronics. Those examples include a voltage-to-current converter, a mean-time-between-failures (MTBF) calculator, a resistor color-code decoder using voice input, a voltage-regulator circuit calculator, and others. Instead of simply presenting and describing the examples, the author steps readers through the creation of the needed spreadsheets, formulas, graphs, formats, and other portions of the project.

The examples are not static. In the MTBF example, you will have an opportunity to create "scenarios" that let you try combinations of variables to determine what happens under "what if" conditions. The book comes with a CD-ROM that contains all the examples as well as an eBook version of the book. As you learn by doing, you'll gain experience using Excel so you can better apply it to your own engineering problems.

(Disclosure: I write for several magazines owned by Reed Elsevier, the parent company of the Newnes series of books. I do not work with the book-publishing group, however.)

This is a book you keep around because you forget all the tricks you pick up. I have a copy of the book and have used it a few times. Very handy in those situations where you need to use excel because everyone else is - its good that its for electrical engineers. Its good that it has those things that no one will teach you how to use.

This is book provide practical examples which are useful and helpful to me in my analogue design work, e.g. the variation of anlaogue reference voltages. Besides, this book also covers some digital applications. The book is easy to read and the spreadsheets are available in the enclosed CD ROM and we can use it as a reference, this saves me much time to regenerate the spreadsheet.

Books give idia opn core technology on exchange. I am happy that this book will not for paper passing orientation

Books give idia opn core technology on exchange. I am happy that this book will not for paper passing orientation

I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer and had the pleasure of sitting in on one of the authors presentaions. I expect the technical content of the book will be first rate. This should also be an easy read if half of her sense of humor translates well into print.

I am looking forward to the release of the book.

I wish this author would put pen to paper again - this book was a joy to read; succinct, apposite and conversational in tone. Brilliant!

I consider myself an intermediate Excel user and amateur VBA programmer. However my knowledge of formulas and functions is lacking, so I purchased this book. Within the first few pages I was learning things about selecting ranges, paste special, etc that I didn't know before. The book explains many basic worksheet functions and also covers forms and controls, Analysis Toolpak functions, Lists, Advanced Filters, Subtotals, Solver and Goal Seek. Uses easy to understand examples to illustrate formula usage. It was able to explain Advanced Filter in a way I was finally able to understand. I'll have to read through the book again just to make sure I didn't miss anything, that's how much information was being conveyed. It does include some statistical functions and business modeling which was a bit advanced and isn't really much use to me, but overall it's an extremely helpful book. A great addition to anyone's Excel library and it will be at fingertip's reach for a long time to come.

I got a copy of this book through a publisher I work with and think it's amazing. The author does a great job of making formulas and functions accessible and practical for the reader in a way that the online help is unable to do. Each description of a function comes with practical and interesting examples of how to apply what you've learned. This new series from Que is going to be a great addition to their lineup.

I bought this book to get the definitions of the ODDF... and ODDL... bond functions used in Excel, as the mathematical definitions of both these functions and the parameters used in them, as given in the MS Excel 2000 Help topics, are missing a crucial 10% of the needed text. Unfortunately, there are major errors in concept in the discussion of the Excel ODDL... and ODDF... bond functions in this book (July 2004 printing). The author appears to have guessed at how these functions are to be used and at the meaning of certain parameters used by these functions, and guessed horribly wrong. He has communicated to me that any changes to be made will be made on release of the next edition. I have no reason to believe that any other material in the book is incorrect. (A rating was required for this warning to be submitted.)

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I have been teaching Excel and other Microsoft application for twelve-years, and I still found new information in this book.

The information is from the basic to the "WOW, Who thought of that?" Working with and calculating TIME and DATE functions has always been a pain....pain solved Chapter 10. Automated time cards are a breeze.

If you already know a lot about Excel, but don't use all the features everyday, then this book will help get started quicker when you need to use seldom used functions and create really robust formulas.

I was so proud of one very complex formula I almost had it tattooed to my leg.

Keyword: ALMOST

Global Outsourcing with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System is an excellent book and informational resource. The format is easy to follow, intuitive, and simplifies gaining an understanding of both the concept of global outsourcing as well as the software.

Note: This review gives more importance to the processes than the other obvious benefits.

Who should read this book?
- On-site coordinators
- Off-shore managers
- Process managers/Product Managers
- Key people involved in distributed development/outsourcing.

Why this book is useful?
- This book can be used as a process guidance for outsourcing/distributed environment.
- This book clearly identifies the day to day issues of a distributed development environment and gives options on how to mitigate the risks.
- Explains all the possible options on how efficiently VSTS can be used.
- This is very useful not only for the teams using VSTS 2005, but also for any distributed development team as this clearly gives an idea of what processes should be in place. VSTS is an all-in-one tool which helps in making the life easier.
- For companies which do not prefer to use VSTS can also leverage from the processes clearly mentioned in the book and can achieve similar efficiency by using different free tools available in the market.
- The book has shown how to customize the VSTS to suit the specific need along with the code which is very handy and reduces a lot of effort in customizing.
- More importantly, this book is very handy and easily understood by techies and non-techies alike. Non-techies can understand the processes without getting into any technical details.
- Addresses the issues faced by bigger and smaller companies and bigger or smaller teams.

Jamil Azher's GLOBAL OUTSOURCING WITH MICROSOFT VISUAL STUDIO 2005 TEAM SYSTEM tells how to manage outsourced projects using Visual Studio 2005, which engages developers, project managers and team leads alike. GLOBAL OUTSOURCING takes it examples from the real world also: it examines typical outsource management issues, applications, and problem-solving in a fine technical overview programmers will relish.

This book is indeed about global outsourcing, but it deals with the outsourcing of software not athletic shoes or kitchen ware. Specifically, as you might guess from the title, it concentrates on the use of Microsoft's Team System version of Visual Studio 2005. Other Microsoft products such as Project and Excel from the Office suite are also shown as a part of an integrated management system.

There is little question tht outsourcing is here to stay. The cost savings are simply to great to be ignored. A programmer with a few years of experience in the US is paid an average of $55K, in India $15K, and in China $9K.

There is also no question that outsourcing brings its own problems in terms of management, control and especially communications. Many of these problems are specifically discussed in the book, and it goes on to show that the Microsoft tools can assist in these areas. The tools will not, of course, guarantee success but they may help to make a project a success.

This Book it's the one you should read If you want to learn how to protect against hackers methodologies out there,
highly recommended.

This is a must-have book for anyone who works with Windows clients or servers as a part of their job. It gives a lot of detail, both on what security issues Windows security administrators face, as well as guidance on how to mitigate risks regarding Windows security. The checklists in the back of the book alone are worth keeping as a baseline lockdown policy.

This book is awesome! It covers everything including vista. I have many editions of hacking exposed and so far I am loving it!

John- OSCP, C|EH, MCSA, CCNA, CCDA,

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of HE:Windows.

The latest HE:Windows takes us toe to toe with Vista and Server 2008 and gives us a recap of some Win2k3 and Win2k knowledge. I was torn between whether to give this book three or four stars. I ended up giving it a four because it was well written, hit the majority objectives it laid out, and would be useful for someone that didn't have the two previous iterations, if you have the other two keep in mind there is a fair amount of content reuse and if you do this for a living, it may come up short of expectations.

The book covers a lot of ground but at the end I was left feeling like the authors were saying that if I was pentesting a Vista host or Server 2008 host/domain I should just call it quits. Going back and rereading a bit of the HE: Windows Server 2003 book I felt they said the same thing in that book as well. This obviously ended up being not the case, and I don't think will be the case with Vista and Server 2008 either. Its also not a viable option for any penetration tester.

Some examples of what I am talking about can be seen in Chapter 4 where the SMB enumeration examples only work against Windows 2000 and maybe Windows XP SP1. No mention of how to actually start pulling that information out from current environments. The Active Directory section reused the old content and made no discussion of any current tools or changes in 2003 environments and 2008 environments which have pretty much eliminated anonymous binds to extract information. Chapter 5, Hacking Windows Specific Services reused a lot of content which was disappointing, especially disappointing was the reuse of the smbrelay content, especially with tools that work much better like the smbrelay module in the metasploit framework.

The rootkit chapter is pretty good and talks about a rootkit I had never heard of (Unreal rootkit)..

Client side attacks has a decent update to it covering phishing, ActiveX, office and pdf exploits and a bit of cross site scripting, but refers you to the HE Web Applications book for more detail, which is fair.

Physical Attacks section is mostly the same with some updates on wireless, keyloggers and bootkits but mostly just overviews not followable steps.

Ch12 windows security features and tools is probably what pushed the book from a 3 to a 4. It covered bitlocker, Vista Windows integrity control, server hardening, stack protections, and others information.

Best book on PowerPoint I've found. Has great info for new and more experienced users.

How To Do Everything With PowerPoint 2002 by Ellen Finkelstein, is completely "user friendly" solutions-packed guide illustrates how to create high-quality, attention-getting, impressive, PowerPoint presentations quickly and easily by effectively using text, graphics and multimedia. In addition, How To Do Everything With PowerPoint 2002 also includes useful tips on delivering any presentation like a pro!

This book shows you how to do everything with PowerPoint 2002 (that's from the title!) - yet the best part of the book is that everything is explained in an easy yet comprehensive style. No task is too difficult - no idea too far to grasp. One might imagine that since this book seems so easy, it might cover just the basics - yet the book goes much beyond mere basics to encompass topics like macros, distribution, delivery, customization - and an excellent chapter on charts. Finally, you'll find snippets of extra info from presentation gurus worldwide - all in one book!

Geetesh Bajaj/Indezine.com

This book makes it easy to look up my answers. I love the cautions Ellen gives. She gives a caution about being sure the hyperlink color shows up on the slide. All these pointers make it easy for me to help my clients. This is a perfect book for a novice who can easily follow her directions and it's great for me as I know lots but need some help in certain areas. I found that help easily. She's got call out boxes called tips, short-cuts, cautions, did you know and how to's. There's an excellent chapter on creating charts. I will use this as a reference for when my clients ask me questions as well as an update for what's inside PowerPoint 2002. You will only create better more effective presentations using Ellen's tips and easy to follow pointers.

Once that you are done with the SDK/MSDN documentation, which saves you some money on basic books, the next logical step is to look for an "Inside" book.
This is an excellent reference book that needs to be handy when you face a real world SOA issue.
Again, have fun with the basic stuff and once you are in need, come for more fun with this book.

The author's approach to teaching you WCF is to first tell you why you'd even want to know about WCF in the first place and then tell you how it works. I think this is a great approach and I wish more authors would write like this. If you want to understand the *why* and the *how* this book is for you.

One of the greatest 'Inside' book I've ever read. Author did a fantastic job.
Excellent writing, sapmles are easy to understand also for not so experienced WCF programmers like me (this was my second book I've read about WCF after Programming WCF Services (Programming) by Juval Lowy).
Book has just 'only' 300 pages but it's because there is absolutely no fluffy filler like in many IT books.
I think this book is fully comparable to Jeffrey Richter's legendary programming books.

I also suggest to read Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed.

Having had the need to learn WCF recently, I picked up Justin's Book and it rocks.
First it's not just a dump of the SDK (don't you hate that?).
2nd the guy clearly has a personality and is a fluent writer, the book is very informative and keeps your interest throughout.
You can follow along with the book in easy to consume bite sized chunks, and be a WCF master before Tea.

There is no end to the number of books purporting to tell you what you need to know, but I found this to be the only one that really did. I would have passed it over, passed upon some of the previous offerings from the publisher, had I not attended a class Mr. Sankar taught. I found him to be one of the most knowledgeable in the industry, and it comes through on every page of this work, as well.

I ordered this book hesitantly after reading the reviews. They all mentioned Active Directory and I feared I would be getting a book that would not address my needs since we are running Windows NT 4.0.

Once the book arrived, however, I put all those fears away. Yes, Active Directory is covered, but so is Windows NT as it exists and is used today. This book truly is the definitive guide, and we were able to integrate our Red Hat servers with our NT thanks only to what I found in here. A job VERY well done!

Beyond any and all doubt, this is the BEST book on Active Directory I have seen. Not only does it address the integration issues from every stand point, but it shows how everything ties together - something that is only important if you really have to support what you build.

Forget all the other filler on the market - this is the book to get integration done and keep it working when you move to AD (and you will!)

I looked at a lot of integration books before deciding on this one. Not only does it tell me what I need to do to make my systems talk today, but the Active Directory coverage helped with the Win2K pilot that we've got running simultaneously. If/when we do switch over from NT 4 to Win2K, I'll be ready thanks to the info in here.

Just as everyone needs to learn to cross the street without getting hit by a car, everyone needs to learn to use the Internet safely - and this applies even if you think you are a technophobe. Linda Criddle explains that installing protective software is not enough. Antivirus, antispyware and firewall programs won't do you any good if you don't know how to protect your personal information and avoid exploitation; you can damage yourself more than any virus can. Criddle organizes her advice into 13 steps, and she provides helpful "think about it" and "find out more" boxes as well as real-life examples, images of Web pages, diagrams and sample forms. getAbstract recommends Criddle's advice if you blog, browse, send e-mail or instant messages, or play Internet games, either at home or at work - in other words, to just about anyone who'd rather be safe than sorry.

Linda Criddle has written the definitive parents' guide to Internet safety. As the executive at Microsoft who is responsible for idenitfying emerging online risks to children, she looks at the situation through the eyes of an expert and a parent--and then re-examines the landscape from the perspective of a potential predator, exposing hidden vulnerabilities that put us at risk for exploitation.

Criddle's book is comprehensive and specific. She alerts us to the ways that we are exposing our personal information to the general public, including instances in which parents inadvertently give away identifying information about their children. She is knowledgeable about the way predators use the Internet to identify potential victims and groom them, keeping in mind that online as in "real life" a predator is most likely to be someone known to a child.

"Look Both Ways" is almost overwhelming in its comprehensive scope. The book covers the latest developments in blogging, instant messaging, and online dating safety, as well as fraud scenarios including financial scams and phishing. Linda Criddle has written an essential guide that will help families develop skills and sensible limits that will ensure that parents and kids have positive Internet experiences. This book is an eye-opener and a vital addition to every parent's library.

This book offers a no-nonsense, simple to follow and understand, approach to protecting your family online. I have kids that loves browsing, playing games and searching for content online and I am always worried that they might expose themselves to risks and harm. The book helped me understand how to protect them without having to bar them from using online services... a must have for anyone who has a PC at home.

I was impressed by this common-sense approach to online safety. Through a lot of the problems out there involve kids and teens, the authors really drive home the point that everybody is at some risk and everybody can be safer if they use their heads. Then the book tells you how to do just that. A must for parents or anybody who uses the internet.