Microsoft Books

Great work Michael! Where were you when NT 4.0 first came out?

After wading through many different NT 4.0 Administrator Bibles, I found this book to be an excellent read. Having not had previous experience supporting an NT environment of any kind, I was looking for some serious help to get up to speed. Well this book did it.

My copy of this book now sports many little "sticky" markers and is wonderfully colored with highlighted and underlined notes. The only "bible" that I've read completely.

This book is well written, easy to follow and does not need to be read in sequential order. I jumped from chapter to chapter and still found the information useful. I have now jumped from "scared" to try it, to "hey let's dive in mode." It's a wonderful feeling when you can get information from a book and feel confident to stride forth into the strange and unknown.

I found an acronym that was new to me, and told the publisher. The next thing I knew, I received a surprise e-mail from the author explaining the acronym with examples. So how many authors do you know that will take the time to answer your questions?

I think I've found the ideal title with this `Windows XP: Visual Quickstart Guide'. It is basically a reference book with step-by-step numbered instructions and tips with screen shots (in black and white) presented in two columns on each page. You can see some of the pages by clicking on 'see inside this book' under the cover picture above. The writing is simple, straightforward and in nineteen chapters I find it very comprehensive. It is aimed at the beginner and intermediate (that's me) pc user, so if you are just starting out you'll be pleased to find that chapter one begins with `Logging on'. Another good test for a pc book is the quality of its index (I even looked at two that had no index) and this one has nineteen pages.

I think that Chris Fehily's `Windows XP' is an absolute bargain but if you do want something basic and colorful have a look at `Windows XP plain & simple' by Jerry Joyce and Marianne Moon. Each page has plenty of screen shots and short numbered captions. It's a nicely designed landscape book aimed at the beginner and published by Microsoft but certainly not as comprehensive as the Visual Quickstart Guide.

The book instantiates over 1000 tasks faced by sysadmins of MS Windows 2000 and XP. These are tasks of all levels of complexity.

The book has three great virtues. First, of course, is its comprehensiveness. The sheer sweep of the tasks is staggering, from the trivial "What is the history of NT?" to the "How do I perform an unattended installation?" (slacker) to the "How do I recover a lost Administrator password?" (naughty naughty). Naturally, you will never need to ask the latter!

The second virtue is that you have random access to the tasks. Wait a minute, you might say. "Of course I have random access. I can turn to any page I want. It's a book, isn't it?" Yes. But it is not a textbook. You do not need to read the earlier pages to understand a task. Crucial if you need an emergency fix NOW.

Its final virtue is the contents pages. The tasks are grouped into 38 chapters, for that number of broad topic clusters. Within each, the tasks are listed as questions. How do I do such-and-such? Gets to the point. You can quickly find your fix.

Part of the reason for the heft of this 1275 page book is that the author has been generous in providing screen captures of appropriate windows. Not, I hasten to add, merely to beef up the book. If you have done any sysadmin duties, you will know the value of a good screen capture of what you should be seeing or doing.

The toughest question about this book is "Why buy it?" It is derived from the author's website. So why can't you just go there? Of course you can. But what if your computer won't reboot, and no nearby computer has net access? What if your crashed computer was the gateway? (You're in deep doo-doo now.) Or maybe you only have one computer (it's your one and only home computer). Even a tyro sysadmin soon learns that it is good to have hardcopy manuals within reach. Consider making this one of those manuals.

I don't have 2000, but everything for XP has been very accurate...

The week part is, the writer suggested something in one chapter and the same thing to other chapter. Duplicate suggestioning. First few chapters details the System Policy and it's implementation. Rest of the chapters details each template files structure. As to implement the policy a Network Admin don't need the unnessary details. It could save some pages and price would drop.

Though it's limitation I like the writer's expert writing style and give the book ALL STARS.