Microsoft Books

Usually, when I read a book on a programming technology, I expect to see some source code somewhere. This book is surprising in that regard because it only contains plain english from the first page to the last. There was a hint on the cover page by indicating that managers are included in the targeted audience. This feature has some merits but is also a pain at some other places.

When presenting software to programmers, the most straight to the point way to present the material, it is with source code and I feel that at some occasions, a function definition would have replaced pages of explanations. On the other hand, it is easy to get lost in pages of source code filled with error condition handling code where a simple paragraph of plain english would have been enough to communicate the general idea behind a software module.

With these remarks in mind, this is why, as a programmer, I did not like the first few chapters describing COM basics and really appreciated the last chapters covering OLE compound documents, ActiveX and the usage of COM by MS Internet Explorer.

If you are interested in COM this is a must read. Clear, easy to follow, accurate explanation of the concepts. If you are interested in code look at Don Box "Essential COM" book, but read this one first.

This book is a deep survey of COM within 300 clearly written pages, and many many pictures and schemes. If you are looking for code examples etc. it is NOT FOR YOU. But if you want to understand what is COM, what are COM related technologies; if you are looking for best introduction, it has no rival.

This is an all around good book. However you will not be able to produce any code after reading it. It will give you an introduction to COM, OLE, and ActiveX technologies. You will especially not be able to use the OLE interfaces after reading this book, you will just have an idea of what they are. Buy it, I recommend it, just know what you will gain from it.

This is one of my favorite books. This book gave me an excellent understanding of COM architecture. It's concise and has just the right amount of info. If you are looking for a ready made set of code sample to cut & paste in your project or if you are more interested about 'how' than 'why' of COM then this book is not for you. I have recommended this book and also lent my copy to many. I couldn't keep the book down. An excellent read. David Chappell has done a great job!

This is a general comment regarding Hacking Exposed series. I owned Hacking Exposed (first edition) and then I moved to the more specific Hacking Exposed books, so now I've got Hacking Linux Exposed, Hacking Windows 2000 Exposed and hacking web Applications exposed. All those books absolutely worth it, do not hesitate to buy any of them.

Don't run Windows without it. An in-depth windows security book written for those who do not understand geek. Easy to read and chocked full of info provided to save you from common (and not so common) windows sins. Definitely for the home and enterprise network user/admin.

If you are responsible for a Windows 2000 server and do not have this book, you are asking for trouble. Get it today!!!!

Excellent book which helps you secure your system from the attacker's point of view. It makes you think as a hacker to be able to find the vulnerabilities in your machine/network.

My security officer loves this book because it allows him to send me emails guaranteed to keep me up at night. ;-)

As a life-long, well since 1984 Macintosh person, I DETEST that every now and then I'm forced to used Windows for certain applications, and once that horrible machine is opened, sometimes it's useful to use the version of Word there. Plus, when I went back to Rutgers to finish my BA in journalism, they only used Windows Word. The pain of resorting to such nonsense was GREATLY relieved by this book, which made it a lot easier to get through unlearning everything I already knew and all the shortcuts I used on Mac and having to deal with such an unintuitive operating system. I would hate to have had to struggle through Windows without this book, and the spiral-bound version made it so much more convenient to keep around. When I close up my Windows machine and get back to a real computer, my Mac G5 dual processor, the book folds up nicely underneath. Kudos to Flisser, Richardson, & the Nerdy Books team!

As a graphic designer, I thought this book is an excellent tool to have next to your computer to be able to review any shortcuts of the program you are working on. I love the characters and their clever quotes on the tips. It's an easy and fun way to work. This is the first book of its kind!

I found the booklet awkward to use, and written in an irritating and patronizing 1960's "hip" style. I was hoping for something straightforward but the authors seemed more intent on showing off their cleverness than in helping someone struggling with a complex machine. It was also overpriced. The cartoons were kind of cute but if I want a cartoon book I'll buy a copy of "Peanuts".

As a graphic designer, I thought this book is an excellent tool to have next to your computer to be able to review any shortcuts of the program you are working on. I love the characters and their clever quotes on the tips. It's an easy and fun way to work. This is the first book of its kind!

This book deserves more than five stars for all the time and frustration it will save you.

If you are like me, Microsoft Word has two major drawbacks:

(1) Automatic formats that change things from what you want to what you don't want, and are hard to disable

(2) A manual that would cause a hernia to lift (and is daunting to contemplate opening).

This book overcomes both of those problems.

Let me explain a little about why this book is valuable before describing it.

First, the authors clearly have a lot of experience with Word because they had tips for every problem I have ever had using the program. Soon, I found myself racing through to find the sections that would help me.

Second, this book will be especially valuable to authors and others who need to create long text files. I knew there had to be ways to automatically do a universal change of one word for another. Now I know how to do it! Wow! Can you imagine how much time that will save?

Third, I suspect this book will be even more valuable to those who would like to add a lot of snazzy graphics to their Word documents. I don't plan to, but I was impressed to see how to do that.

The book is spiral bound and comes with a cardboard stand, so I can leave it on the top of my word processing station and flip through it easily without having to clear a lot of space.

The structure is logical in that it begins with simple subjects and moves on to more specialized ones. Here are the topics:

Documents, documents, documents

Navigating a document

Selecting and navigating text

Character and paragraph formatting

Changing fonts and point sizes

Special characters

Paragraph stuff

Lists?

Creating, editing and applying styles

Undo, cut, copy and paste

Lost something?

Page breaks, section breaks and columns

AutoCorrect, AutoText and the Spike

Creating and using forms and mail merge

Spell check and the Thesaurus

Out in the field

Those nasty tabs

Tables, rows and columns

Making templates

Headers, footers and cool page stuff

Squares, circles, stars, lines, autoshapes and more!

Selecting, moving and duplicating objects

Fills, lines, colors and shadows

Inserting objects and clip art

Hyperlinks

Toolbars

Menus

Help

Each tip page has more than one tip on it. The main one is presented in straightforward fashion. "#88 To paste the contents of the clipboard Press Ctrl + V." Then there is a comical cartoon figure (a surfer in this case) with another tip. These secondary tips vary in difficulty, with the type of character used indicating the complexity level. "The very happening thing is that I noted the last 4 shortcuts (Ctrl + Z, X, C and V) are in a row on the keyboard."

This page format works very well for breaking up the text, and making it more interesting. The shift in style allows the mind a break from one complicated item to another. It also creates a dialogue on the page that makes it easier to remember the idea.

It turns out that these ideas work on almost all versions of Word, so even if you do not have Word 2000, you will get benefit from this book. I use Word 6.0, and almost everything applies. A number of the directions apply to Excel and Powerpoint, as well.

What I had not realized is that Word is not well enabled for those who only use the mouse. The more sophisticated adjustments almost always require using the keyboard, instead. So that insight was worth the price of the book alone. I had found myself using the keyboard more and more with Word, and did not know why. Now I understand. It's because I can get my results faster and easier that way.

Let me give you one word of caution. Because the book starts with the simplest and works towards the most complex applications, you may already know most of the first 50 tips. Keep going. At some point, almost everything will be something that you did not know before.

I wish I could give you an idea of how to go right to the place where you will find exactly the right material to solve your own issues. I don't know how to do that. I suggest that you flip pages so that you can scanned everything once. Then you can come back when you want to use an item. You might add colored Post-It notes to mark the places with a note jotted on them about how you want to use the advice.

The only drawback I found in the book is that sometimes I did not understand the terms used, so the advice did not mean anything to me. A glossary of terms would have helped. Perhaps the "Help" feature in Word can get me through those.

I think there is also a potential benefit in seeing other ways to use Word. I did not realize that the 2000 version has list and mail merging features. That may be something we can use in our office.

After you have finished finding great nuggets of knowledge here, I suggest that you take something that you do for others. Ask them what difficulties they have in using what you provide. See if you can boil down what they need into easier-to-use formats, as well.

Go straight to the solution!

This is definitely in my top three all time picks. Picking up this book, I already had good knowledge of Group Policy and AD implementation but surely needed more conceptual explanations and best practices. However, this book could surely be read and understood by someone just starting to create their own Group Policy implementation. The text kept me interested and was even comical at times. It was very smooth in it's transitions from one topic to another, with many great references. Jeremy Moskowitz is a fine educator and writer. I plan on attending one of his training seminars soon!

An excellent book that teaches group plocy from the ground up, and well into the advanced levels. I especially like end of chapter summeries of tips and practices to avoid the pitfalls of Group Policy hell.

I like the author style in writing the book, it's a kinda active voice approach and this really benefit a lot for reader.

If we talking about Group Policy books for Windows 2000, I recommend this one, it's 110% pure Group Policy. One more thing the discussion of login Profile is superb.

Highly recommend this book to any IT professional involved with Group Policy or Active Directory. I knew that Group Policy was a great way to lower TCO in most organizations, but was always struggling to decode the Microsoft documentation. This book covers all aspects of Group Policy, in great detail, with great examples, and with extra muggets that I believe you will not find anywhere else.

I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer and has been working more or less day and night for three years - in labs, in theory, in real-world and in class - with Windows 2000, Active Directory and Group Policy. Earlier this year I invested in a few books concerning these subjects, and was once more thoroughly disappointed. Every one seems to be meant for beginners, and/or for the publishing business: thick, promising books with nothing in them. Said to my collegue: "Perhaps one knows so much nowadays, that you really can't find anything new in books (as opposed to Internet, real-world, lab)," and I actually decided, somewhat bitterly, not to waste any more money on "computer related" literature.

But then I read Moskowitz' "Windows 2000 Group Policy, Profiles, and IntelliMirror" (2001), and is what I hope for every time; here's a writer who's obviously passionate about the subject, who with great theoretical and practical knowledge been working hard to share his knowledge in a clear, no-nonsense fashion.
As you know, these kind of books usually have a common problem: they all tell you the same basics, throw in some pseudo-advanced details, and - most importantly - avoid the tough nuts. What's so liberating with Moskowitz' work, is that he indeed tells you the basics, just to make sure you follow him, then he goes one step further, along the way he throws in some real nuggets for technicians, and cracks them nuts one after another, like it's never been a problem at all. No-nonsense, easy read, nearly fascinating from the first page to the last. I'm very impressed. This book is extremely useful, a real treasure. If you're at Amazon searching for a book about these matters, you've certainly found what you're looking for.

I myself, will keep my eyes open for further works by Jeremy Moskowitz. Aside of being very experienced and knowledgable, he's also a skilled writer, free from that nudge-nudge-humor which some writers grasp at to make their thick nonsense "easy read"; but still he is easy read, has a laid back dry sense of humor, and writes fluidently. I don't think he's written any other books, though he's been writing for magazines, but I will keep my eyes open. This is truly great work! Perhaps the best in a long time.

This is a great book. It covers all of the design and tuning needed for a Citrix environment. It includes desktop replacement strategies...the works. It is easy to understand and organized well.
I was forced to learn Metaframe 1.8 in a hurry and this book gave me the tools to be able to implement a robust thin-client solution.

Having just gone through the process of loading Citrix XP this book made life a million times easier.(The book appears to me more orientated towards earlier versions than the one I loaded but this caused no problems at all)
I had had very little experience with Citrix beforehand but this book prepared me for the install and fine tuning of Citrix once installed...Take a bow Mr Mathers - very well written and well layed out

If you are new to TS/Metaframe, but you have a solid handle on Windows NT/2000, this will be an easy and informative read for you. While you will already have a solid grounding in file system an regsitry security, system and group policy, user groups, performance tuning, and system configuration, Thin Client Solutions is full of detailed information on how to apply your NT/Win2K savvy in these areas to the TS environment.

Mathers covers both the TS and Citrix products in detail. You'll get coverage on everything ranging from the differences between the two products, to installation, licensing, optimization, security, and application integration. And don't forget, the appendixes are also chock full of useful stuff such as a TS/Metaframe command reference, file system security configuration scripts, registry security configuration scripts, and more.

A word of caution, however. If you don't know Windows NT/2000, you'll probably be lost -- Mathers assumes that you are on a pretty solid footing with the Windows environment. If not, you'll need to bring your Windows NT/2k skills up to speed before this book will be of benefit you.

If you are thinking about configuring a Terminal Services server and/or using Citrix Metaframe, this is the best book you can buy. I have bought them all, and even if you have experience with TS, and or Citrix, this book is full of great tips and extremely useful information. Buy it! Don't wait.

WINDOWS NT/2000
Thin Client Solutions
Implementing Terminal Services and Citrix MetaFrame
AUTHOR: Todd W. Mathers
PUBLISHER: New Riders
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

BOOK REVIEW: Windows NT/2000 reminds a reader of "War and Peace" in that it contains over 800 pages of in-depth information. The font is a fairly readable size.

Author's note, tips, warnings and many graphical examples can be found throughout the book. The Content section has 13 pages while the Index contains 44 information packed pages. With this much reference material, the reader should not lack the ability to locate the information he/she is seeking. Just in case this isn't enough, the book is divided into Parts and each Part lists what the Chapters of that Part contain.

If the reader is building a "Windows NT or 200 thin client system", Windows NT/200, Thin Client Solutions, Implementing Terminal Services and Citrix MetaFrame should provide the answers.

As an E-Myth/Gerber fan, I consider Erick's work an "E-Myth for IT Services". It will get you thinking about your business as a business and it provides a roadmap to get where you need to go.

Making the transition from working in to working on your business is the most powerful thing you can do to put more money in your pocket. Do it now. Buy this book!

Managed services, delivering different types of unlimited amounts of IT support for a flat fee, has been revolutionizing the IT industry in the SMB space. The model is dramatically different than the typical break/fix or blocks of hours way of doing business- it requires a fundamental business, sales, and technical transformation.

Erick Simpson's IT company was an early adopter, quickly became hugely successful, and Erick continues to lead in the field by delivering some of the best educational materials out there on this subject. I personally own this book and his follow-up sales book and have attended some of his presentations- outstanding! Some may balk at the price, but compare it to your professional hourly rate, and you'll find that the time saved and money earned make it a no-brainer. His materials, particularly this book, directly helped me close many thousands of dollars of recurring business in 2007.

Insightful, intelligently written, engaging and motivational. Easily one of the best I've read in quite awhile. Well worth every penny of the investment required.

I've spent more than a decade covering the IT channel. This book should be required reading for any VAR looking to become an MSP. The author manages to cover key areas (particularly business, sales and marketing) that most tech-focused VARs overlook.

I am a business owner interested in the Managed Services market space. I have read so much about Managed services but have not found a step by step guide on how to implement the managed services business plan or sell those services to clients. What I needed were step by step guides on both the topics. I was introduced to Erick's books by another associate. This book and "The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER!" by Erick were exactly what I was looking for. Erick is not just a subject matter expert in Managed Services but has practiced and implemented his teachings and recommendations. He explains several key concepts and best practices on Managed Services, Deliverables, Pricing, How to identify clients, sell, support and maintain the services and build a long term win-win relationship with the clients. The coverage on How to Hire and Train your sales staff is worth its weight in gold. Included along with these 2 books are several forms, analysis tools and documents which make the sales process a whole lot easier with predictable results. These are the bibles for my managed services business and I refer them frequently. If you are serious about building a profitable managed services business, you must have these books.

I found the book well laid out; it was easy to find solutions to problems. I like the small size; very easy to carry around. I recommend this series of books to anyone who is an admin.

WOW. So much for so little and in such a little compact book is amazing. Perfect for a newbie looking to get into Administration of windows 2000 servers or a seasoned MCSE that needs refresher.
Excellent book.

My library of tech books fills many shelves. Out all of those books, Microsoft Windows 2000 Administrator's Pocket Consultant is one of the most used. I highly recommend it as a desktop reference. I refer to it all the time and it is one of the rare tech books I read cover to cover as well.

This is the best Win2K Server book I have come across for daily administration. Stanek's writing style is actually enjoyable to read and easy to understand. He obviously knows the subject, and this book is like attending an expert training class. It's refreshing to read a book written for the real admins. I also used it to help prep for MCSE tests on Win2K.

I particularly bought the book because I needed additional training on Active Directory. It has also helped with our DNS and DHCP configuration. Finally I found a book that covers Win2K DNS in good detail and also details how it integrates with AD. After reading the book, I finally fixed our DNS and AD problems. Another highlight of the book for me was his covering disk configurations, roaming profiles and EFS. Lots of expert tips and insights. Again, the book's not an exhaustive reference on the subject but is a solid daily adminstration reference. I highly recommend this book as a primary tool to correctly learn how to admin a Win2K domain.

I have the first edition and got the second edition immediaetly. With the second edition, Stanek has done a great job! This book is well written, easy to follow and concise, yet packed with lot's of useful information and hints and tips for Windows 2000. I consider myself a fairly expert Windows admin, but still learned quite a lot from this book. Like other Windows books that Stanek has written, this one is excellent for either new admins or experienced admins. I whole heartedly recommend this book to everyone.

After about 5 years as a java developer, I took a new job as a .NET / C# developer. This book was a great starting point for me. Going from java to c# is a relatively easy transition, but this book makes it much easier and quicker. The book compares the two languages and highlights the differences which made it easier for me to pick up. I'm not a person who reads many books, for work or pleasure, so I don't have much to compare it with. But out of the 10 or so books in my work library, this is the second best book I've used. (The best I own is Effective Java. I'd really like to get one like that for c#.)

This was truely an amazing book, I've read many .NET books, all of which assume zero knowledge of programming, or very little. So when I skipped the first few chapters, or skipped them (Since I've been a Java Developer for several years), I missed valuable differences between Java and .NET.

Be sure you do know your stuff in Java, or else this book will seem over your head. This is not a beginners book. But if you're a Java developer, or have similar programming experience, this book is 100% for you.

My only quirk with this book, is that at times, it's more of a refrence/comparison, over how to use several key .NET features. And it seemed to jump around a little. So actually I'd probably rate this book a 4.75...but rounding up gives us a 5, which it pretty much deserves.

I highly recomend this book out there for anyone who is NOT a beginner programmer, or comes from a Java background. This book is a MUST read for you.

This books hits the spot for java developers, the intended audience. A one page description on delegates, for example, has all the information you need to get started with delegates. The Oreilly book has a long winded chapter on it and the essence was lost in the obtuse example provided.

As an experienced Java developer who was "forced" to move into the C# and .NET world, I turned to this book to help me make that transition. I am very glad I did so. This book provided nearly all of the background I needed for that transition, and it still serves as my primary C# reference a year later. (By the way, working in the C# and .NET world is not as bad as I feared it would be.)

If you are accustomed to Java and new to the world of .NET and Microsoft books in general, you will find the majority of these books to be written for a less sophisticated audience than you are used to. My advice is to be very cautious what you spend your money on, as many of the books about Microsoft programming topics are not worth the investment.

This book, however, is very much worth the money you will spend on it.

i could have sworn this book was from microsoft press. This book did a *great* job of being unbiased, and presented "just the facts". It did so in such a clear manner as well, straightforwardly laying out the similarities and differences between java and C#, and each's strengths and weaknesses (briefly).

definitely recommended!

I like all those description and examples: the topic may be complex, but really an interesting thing when enjoying it slowly.

I used the book when I was working on templates. Book is very clear and concise with proper layout of chapters. I was able to read relevant sections and get clear understanding. It is possible to get all information by reading C++ specs and other sources, but having this one book is a real time saver.

If you work on templates and have some doubts ever then have this book next to you.

I must admin that I could have got most of the C++ template info that I actually needed directly from the Internet for free, but I got the book anyway because it is nicer to read a book that to google for everything separately. And once I started reading, I must admit I was quite impressed. LOTS of information and background clearly presented and including reasonable readable examples of a quite hairy topic. But a word of warninng: This book goes beyond being a simple user guide. If you only want to be able to program using templates, this book may be a bit too much. And you should have experience with the C++ standard template library before reading it. If you havn't then you should probably start your quest there instead.

The title says it all :)

To keep it really short and sweet, learning about C++ templates is really painful till this book came along :)

It's my opinion that advanced C++ developers use this book to guide them in understanding and navigating the world of C++ templates. It's simply easy to read and it has amazing clear presentations

Before this book, most C++ textbook were at most devoting one chapter on templates which clearly is not enough to cover a topic as complex as the C++ templates. The C++ Templates book is filling this void nicely and one of the coauthor of the book is the author of my favorite STL book The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference. The book has 4 parts: The basics, templates in depth, templates and design and finally advanced applications. Personnally, I found the 2 last parts good but less interesting because I think that other books such as Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied do a better job to cover templates applications.

Where this book really shines is the first part that covers the C++ templates syntax very well. With a capricious syntax like the templates one, a good reference is essential. One example that come to my mind is when I was trying to declare a friend template function from a class template. That sounds like a simple thing to do but it is not. The syntax rules for this declaration are, to my opinion, far to be intuitive and hard to find in regular textbooks. With the help of this book I have finally been able to fix my friend template function declaration and make my compiler happy.

Citrix MetaFrame XP: Advanced Technical Design Guide, Second Edition was a decent general read. In depth technical detail seemed to be lacking and was replaced by repetitive best practice lectures. However, I enjoyed the authors side comments and general personality that was interwoven into the reading. Overall the book is informative and well written.

We had 2 other books on Citrix Metaframe but the books didn't give us much detail so we started looking for a better resource. I found this book and recommended it to my Network Adminsitrator. I thought I won't get much from it because I don't work with Citrix everyday but when time permits, I read the book and 70% of the time I got the answers from this book.

Not a book for beginners. This is written for engineers and people who already have a good grasp of the basics of Terminal Servers and Citrix. No "how to" install in this book, but rather how to design, implement, identify and resolve your own problems, with a lot of real-life examples.

The style of the book (way it is written) makes a pleasant change from the usual technical books, as it addresses you like you know what you're talking about. You will come out with a clear understading of the issues you're facing and how to resolve them.

This book is self-published, which makes it all the more remarkable.

The book covers up to Windows 2000 and Mataframe XP FR2. I'm keen to see when the next edition comes out, and hpoefully it will concentrate on Windows 2003 + Metaframe 3.0

I had a real tough time searching the Internet and all other places to get some real stuff on Citrix and my search ended with "this" book by "Brain" Madden.

Citrix will notice a sizeable improvement in their sales if they include this book with their product. Everything is explained clearly with visuals and no filler material.

One of the best Tech Books to hit the market in recent times.

In my opinion, this book is the ONLY interesting published book about Citrix until now. I have read most of the available books about Citrix and Terminal Services and this is the only one I would buy again.

If you are a Citrix Certified Administrator, you will find this book very helpful. Personally speaking, I prefer it to most of the Citrix official documentation.

Take into account that it is a book for people who already has a deep knowledge about Citrix. It is not a guide for begginers. It gives you hints to improve your own Citrix project methodology.

Amazon guys, let me suggest this, please: If you are looking for a step-by-step begginers guide, have a look at Methodology in a Box (freely available at http://www.dabcc.com)