Microsoft Books

The book weighs a ton and there's lots packed in it. Have not attempted to use the CD-ROM. Index helped me find specific answers to specific issues, since I don't know the program at all and had to hit the ground running. Have not been able to find answers to more esoteric matters, but the book has been invaluable for my quick-fix situations. Legal-specific and more useful on a daily basis than the "Dummies" book my boss bought. Thank you, Payne Consulting Group!!!

real world advive for anyone interested in applications of word in a business setting

I found the book easy to follow with a lot of useful information in the form of tips and cautions. I purchased the book to prepare for the Word 2002 MOUS exam (and passed). I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Any law firm that uses MS Word has been influenced by the work of Payne Consulting. Payne Consulting was in a conference that went into a committee that worked closely with MS to influence Word and to make it compatible to what law firms got used to with Word Perfect. Interestingly, Word finally has a feature that offers you the opportunity to recover documents if you had not saved it the day before.....wow.....why didn't they do that for corporations.

Well, if you are a Word Perfect user in a law firm today, you will want to open up new vistas by learning MS Word for Law Firms. I recruit in Legal, and this tool is useful to improving your skills and making a transition to a larger law firm possible.

As a forced convert from Word Perfect, I was looking for a resource that would allow me to do two things: (1) learn Microsoft Word; and (2) integrate it into my practice.

Ms. Payne's book helped me with the first task and made Word a much easier program for me to utilize.

I was somewhat disappointed, however, in the second aspect. I would like to automate my litigation documents to a greater extent, but I couldn't fully realize this goal. At the end of the day, I'd like to turn out better, more polished legal documents, but, I think there are some limitations in either my own understanding or the software that prevent me from being as effective as I'd like. At more than 700 pages, Ms. Payne's book certainly contains a good deal of information and suggestions as to how Word can be used in a law firm environment, but I found it to be most helpful as a Microsoft Word resource.

I found this book very detailed, especially on Ch3 which will basically take you by the hand and explain slowly how subnetting and subnet masks work. In addition, The author will summarize after all the facts that were presented and use a real-life experience to help you understand. Very good book.

While this book alone will not help you pass the TCP/IP exam, I still recommend it whole-heartedly for understanding the material on the exam. This book provides a truly rich, no-nonsense, brief, but detailed explanation of the subject. I suggest supplementing this book with a practice exam (Transcenders, or Measureup.com). That should be all that you need. One thing for sure is that you WILL understand subnetting by the time you read through this book. It sure beats reading those 700 page door stomps, in my humble opinion.

Study Guide? -I'm not so sure; The book doesn't ha ve a Glossary, or questions at the end of each chapter. For anyone wanting to understand subnetting, the author has devoted no less than 70 pages toward this subject(Chap. 3). The author has a clear and concise writng style, for easy transition from "page to brain". But I will still give it 5 stars!

The title of this book is misleading, you cannot and WILL not pass Exam 70-059 by studing this book alone. That's the bad part...

What you'll get though, is an astonishing detailed, accurate, and REAL world examples of how TCP/IP and Subnetting/Mask truly work. How many books have you read but only to be disappointed by lack of Subnet/Mask explaination?

I personally have read through more than a dozens of them but NONE can really explain TCP/IP, They CLAIM they know -- BUT where are the explaination and notes? Two pages? Get real! None comes EVEN CLOSE to this book. Some of the books just explain the "concepts" rather than any real world knowledge how it actually works.

For the first time in my life, I TRULY understand how TCP/IP, Subnetting, Subnet Masks, and Router all work together, Dave Kinnaman deserves the highest recoginition for his work. You've earned my respect for life. Please keep up the excellent work.

Even though the TCP/IP exam is being retired, this book is a classic that should be republished. (Maybe with a new name --"Everything You Need to Know about TCP/IP".) I used this book while setting up a network with two subnets. It has real-world advice, not just exam-cram factoids. My copy is dog-eared, highlighted, and well-used.

Subnetting is not easy to learn. Read and re-read Chapter 4, "Subnets and Subnetting." It is the heart of this book, and an excellent tutorial. If you're having trouble getting a handle on subnetting, this book is for you.

This book is absolutely not a book for beginners, but a great desk reference. A must have for any serious Access developer.

As the word 'Developer' should imply, this book is not for MS Access beginners, but once you qualify yourself as 'intermediate' or better, you will feel right at home. Very little of this book is devoted to boring you with rehashes of stuff in the help file (as most other books seem to do). There is a great deal of depth and insight into areas that apply to everyday usage, complex projects, and solutions to many problems MS tends to ignore version after version.

The writing is excellent and they have a web site devoted to updates, errata and such which is very helpful. Chapters 10, 14 and 15 have had an extremely positive impact on the quality and usability of my projects in MS Access as well as VBA and Visual Basic. Many of the code samples are outstanding and written so that you can just drop them in to your projects with no modifications. Many of them are done so well they seem like natural extensions to MS Access (stuff MS 'should' have included in the 1st place).

Complaints? None. Well, okay, I do have 1 minor complaint. They devoted almost 30 pages to The Office Assistant. IMHO these pages and the Office Assistant itself are a complete waste.

This book and its previous versions are the best money I have ever spent. They continue to save me hundreds of hours while adding reliability and capability to all my projects. Highly recommended!

Not only is this series the absolute best when it comes to MS Access, it is the best technical documentation I've had the pleasure to use since the early days of Vax/VMS. A perfect blend of explanation, examples, syntax, and guidance. A level of art to which all others should aspire (and regrettably too many do not).

I'm comfortable with Access but when it comes to VBA I'm a newbie. This book doesn't only tell you what to do, but explains the why behind it. I have a database that I've put double digit hours (10+) into one problem. I got the book read up on combo boxes, the problem area, and in 30 minutes debugged my code to make them do what they were suppose to do. If I get nothing else out of this book it was worth it for that one issue, but upon further reading I'm learning the why's of Access. The code is still a little foreign but now I'm much more comfortable working in VBA. They use Reddicks naming convention which is different to me, but that's easy to look past. A great book!! Thanks Sybex!

Without a doubt, THE best book on Microsoft Access you will find. Most Access Developers will have several books on the shelf next to their desk gathering dust while they search through Google to resolve their latest dilema. Although I'm a Googler as well, my copy of ADH is frayed and worn...but never dusty. The authors write confidently and authoritatively, yet it seems that they take precautions to avoid intimidating the novice. I've seen reviewers referring to this book as "not for beginners." I was at the beginner-intermediate level when I first thumbed through it at a bookstore. I thought the pricetag was a little too high, but after about ten minutes I had to own it. Since then, it's brought me a long way. Whatever your level, if you really want to learn this stuff you will find great value here.

Mary Kirtland has written a terrific resource for those who wish to know more (i.e. go from basic to advanced) on how to program with COM and MTS. I found the example code (and companion CD-ROM) very useful and relatively bug free. Some of the chapters include:

Windows DNA (now .NET)

COM (101)

Data Access Fundamentals

MTS

ASP

Extending MTS

Application Definition and Modeling

Building Data/Business Objects

Packaging

Building the Presentation Layer

Debugging and Troubleshooting (an excellent chapter on a tricky subject)

Performance Validation

Deploying

Extending the Application

COM+ (pretty good for when this was written, it is time to update the book with the latest and greatest, however).

Most of the information here is still relevant, especially to those with a smattering of COM or MTS under their belt and are hungry for more. Everything is wrapped up well with a comprehensive index. Well worth the purchase price. Definitely a must along with "Programming Distributed Apps with MS COM+ and MS VB."

This book does a good job of explaining the COM standard from the ground up. The first third is devoted to COM. The rest of the book is an overview of building an enterprise application from the ground up using Microsoft technologies.

I used this book as my primary reference in preparing for the new Analyzing Requirements exam (70-100) in the new MCSD track based on the recommendation of someone I know that passed the beta. It may not be listed as a study guide for the test, but it is far better than the Syngress or Sybex study guide for that test. (They were both fairly useless.)

This is an excellent overview of Microsoft's DNA and the technologies that make up DNA. The pieces of the DNA puzzle are clearly defined individually and the way they relate to the others. The Island Hopper application sample (maintained up-to-date on MSDN) is a great hands-on intro to the topic. The amount of coverage on topics like COM, MTS, MSMQ, etc. is just right: technically deep enough to help you understand the concepts, short enough to prevent you from shifting your focus from the architecture to technologies contributing to the architecture.

You may try to surf Microsoft's DNA pages to understand the topic (and potentially get lost in the amount of links that span hundreds of different Microsoft technologies) or get this "one" book to really understand what Mr. Gates is talking about for the last couple of years.

After being confused by multiple books on Windows DNA I was very happy to see a book that actually showed and an entire application which utilized this technology. Part I of the book offers a very concise explanation of MTS and COM without getting too deep into the subjects. Part II showed examples of components that the sample project utilized. I enjoyed the fact that the author used both VB and VC++ in her examples. Beyond the examples, the author also offered very good insight into component design and tool selection. It was enough to get you up to speed so that you can look into deeper books on the subject.

Everyone always draws the same n-tier diagram and says they are going to build a scalable, MAINTANABLE solution.

This book actually provides a blueprint, not the 30,000 ft view.

At my job, we call it "The Good Book"

A good book for those who love Halo 2 and those to need a little help gettin' the edge on the enemy!!!

Do you want to know the type of work that is currently being done by the Halo community? If you do, you're in luck! Author Stephen Cawood, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that will show you how to explore the new dimensions of Halo 2 games and some of the most interesting Halo 2 mods that you can create on a modded Xbox.

Cawood, begins by showing you some of the more interesting Halo 2 jumping techniques. Then, he covers the most mysterious of Halo 2 Easter eggs, the skulls. The author continues by showing you how to find some more interesting Easter eggs. Next, he introduces you to interesting things that you can do in the Halo 2 universe. Then, the author covers some interesting anomalies in Halo 2. He continues by showing you the best software tools available for changing the way Halo 2 functions. Then, he shows you how you can create your own weapon variations. The author continues by covering mods that can be made to Halo 2 vehicles. Next, he introduces you to some mods that alter the Halo 2 environment. Then, the author covers mods that relate to the presentation of Halo 2. He continues exploring mods that affect the Halo 2 game engine. Finally, he introduces you to some of the best modded maps that have been produced to date and gets you started on making your own.

In this most excellent book, each hack stands on its own. This book has been written with the same goal in mind, that is, to give you afresh way to enjoy your Halo universe.

He was a little disapointed with the item. He thought it was a book not a magazine

Halo 2 Hacks is a very well written book and easy to understand. The pictures and "visual aids" are very helpful. A definate must for EVERY Halo 2 fan! The section on modding is really well done too. A good introduction to modding, a good source for "how-to" find/use gameplay secrets. A well done book. 5 Stars.

I bought this book, because I'm a big Halo 2 fan. I play Halo 2 all the time. And let me just tell you, this book is the greatest.

Don't let the name Halo 2 Hacks fool you, the first half of this book shows you plenty of Easter Eggs, techniques, glitches, and awesome stuff in the game. The second half shows you modding tools, where to get them, and how to use them. It does absolutely nothing to show you how to cheat on X-Box Live, which is good. I'll bet you didn't know that you can mod a map so when you crouch, you get an ariael view of the sky. You can jump a bazillion feet into the sky. You can put a Scorpion turret on the back of a Warthog. You can even make your shotgun fire dozens of plasma grenades, and this book shows you how to do ALL of those.

See people with interesting textures on their modded maps? This book shows you programs you can use to make those. You can inject meta (I bet you don't even know what that is, but this book will show you!) to make a picture of George Bush apppear over the map. Now I don't know why you would want to, but you can!

I bet you had absolutely no idea before that the Scarab gun is in the form of a Plasma Pistol on Metropolis. This book shows you how to get it. There's a giant soccerball on Metropolis, also. This book shows you how to get it. There's a skull that changes the physics of the game and makes everything explode bigger. This book shows you how to do that. This book shows you EVERYTHING!

In overall, I give this book a 11/10. It is the best guide book I have ever read.

Not only does the author write well and explain concepts expertly, but from the effort she expended in putting together the instructional materials that readers can download to follow her along for the "hands on" parts of the book, one could tell she understands very well what readers need from a tech book writer!!

Great tutorials and help on author's website. Definately a book for someone who needs to start from the beginning!

I am very happy with this book: it's easy to read, the structure is very intuitive and logical, and everything you need to know is covered. If you're just starting with WCF and you're looking for an excellent resource on the subject, look no further.

I purchased this and Lowy's book on WCF. Of the two, I'd say this is the one that will make WCF real to blue collar developers. More technical books need to be written this way. The author does an outstanding job of describing the pieces and parts of WCF from a functional standpoint before leading the reader through simple step-by-step exercises. These do a solid job of reinforcing the theory. I normally blow off working through sample code in technical works, but with WCF, it really helps to explore some of the nuances to things like serialization, callbacks and security. These are best appreciated by doing hands-on walkthroughs and fortunately, the author has provided very good examples in the companion download.

Lowy's book is good for different reasons, but I feel far more conversant in the WCF area having read and re-read Bustamente's book. Lowy's is a nice companion and it goes deep into stuff that, unless your current project really needs it, you'll brain dump in two weeks. Quote Lowy at swank cocktail parties with the hoi poloi, but use this book when you want to gain a solid understanding of this thing we call WCF.

Bustamente writes clearly and to the point. Git r' done types like me who are interested in exploring the functional without getting lost in the minutiae will appreciate Learning WCF.

This book is not about SOA although the author does touch on some basic premises governing what it does for the enterprise. Unlike Lowy, there weren't any real groaners about how SOA is going to replace OO and end world poverty. OO maybe got 30% penetration among software developers in formal polls. (As an informal measure, go into any MS shop and check out how many OO diagrams are created by devs in their work and you'll see what I mean. Most MS shops won't even spend money on third party modeling tools.) SOA isn't going to do any better and it addresses a different set of problems than does OO. Bustamente gives developers a solid grounding in appreciating what WCF can do while leaving all the fluff about "paradigm shifts" and what-not for others.

This is a very good book to get started quickly with WCF. Specially useful are the setup instructions and the section on hosting, which can be big gotchas with new technologies like this one. The section on security is a nice touch.

Here is the table of contents in case you are wondering:

Chapter 1. Hello Indigo
Section 1.1. Service Oriented Architecture
Section 1.2. WCF Services
Section 1.3. Fundamental WCF Concepts
Section 1.4. Creating a New Service from Scratch
Section 1.5. Generating a Service and Client Proxy
Section 1.6. Hosting a Service in IIS
Section 1.7. Exposing Multiple Service Endpoints
Section 1.8. Summary
Chapter 2. Contracts
Section 2.1. Messaging Protocols
Section 2.2. Service Description
Section 2.3. WCF Contracts and Serialization
Section 2.4. Service Contracts
Section 2.5. Data Contracts
Section 2.6. Message Contracts
Section 2.7. Approaches to Serialization
Section 2.8. The Message Type
Section 2.9. Summary
Chapter 3. Bindings
Section 3.1. How Bindings Work
Section 3.2. Web Service Bindings
Section 3.3. Connection-Oriented Bindings
Section 3.4. One-Way and Duplex Communication
Section 3.5. Large Message Transfers
Section 3.6. Custom Bindings
Section 3.7. Summary
Chapter 4. Hosting
Section 4.1. Hosting Features
Section 4.2. ServiceHost
Section 4.3. Self-Hosting
Section 4.4. Hosting on the UI Thread
Section 4.5. Hosting in a Windows Service
Section 4.6. Hosting in IIS 6.0
Section 4.7. IIS 7.0 and Windows Activation Service
Section 4.8. Choosing the Right Hosting Environment
Section 4.9. Summary
Chapter 5. Instancing and Concurrency
Section 5.1. OperationContext
Section 5.2. Instancing
Section 5.3. Concurrency
Section 5.4. Instance Throttling
Section 5.5. Load Balancing and Failover
Section 5.6. Summary
Chapter 6. Reliability
Section 6.1. Reliable Sessions
Section 6.2. Transactions
Section 6.3. Queued Calls
Section 6.4. Summary
Chapter 7. Security
Section 7.1. WCF Security Overview
Section 7.2. Securing Intranet Services
Section 7.3. Securing Internet Services
Section 7.4. Working with Certificates
Section 7.5. Building a Claims-Based Security Model
Section 7.6. Exploring Federated Security
Section 7.7. Summary
Chapter 8. Exceptions and Faults
Section 8.1. SOAP Faults
Section 8.2. WCF Exception Handling
Section 8.3. Exceptions and Debugging
Section 8.4. Fault Contracts
Section 8.5. IErrorHandler
Section 8.6. Summary
Appendix A. Setup Instructions
Section A.1. Database Setup
Section A.2. ASP.NET Provider Model Setup
Section A.3. Certificate Setup
Section A.4. IIS Application Directories
Appendix B. ASP.NET Meets CardSpace
Section B.1. Information Cards and CardSpace: A Brief Tour
Section B.2. Identity Metasystem Participants and Browser Flow
Section B.3. Let's Log In with CardSpace!
Section B.4. Processing the Token
Section B.5. Associating Cards with User Accounts
Section B.6. Creating a Dual Purpose Login Page
Section B.7. Conclusion

This book lives up to all its good reviews. Guarantee yourself a better grade by buying and reading it. It is exactly what it says, a "Study Guide". Although you can pass the exam with just this book, I recommend learning the material in a lengthier manner. Either take the instructor-led courses or buy the Microsoft training kits (I bought the kits), and then read this book just before you take the exam, using it as a "Study Guide". With the help of this book, I passed by a wide margin on my first attempt. There were a couple items covered in the book that were not covered in the MS training kit, but which did appear on the exam. (I won't be specific because of the NDA).

I share all the opinions above. Though the book is rather thin, the content is a real treasure. It covers all one needs not only to pass the NetEss exam but also to get a real knowledge of the subject. I used it together with the Exam Cram and scored 900+ points. It's written very professionally. And it's amazingly cheap! I would strongly recommend the book to everybody learning networking and working towards MSCE.

This book was very easy to read and gives most of the important details needed for the exam. Since it does not include example questions, I used transcender exam questions as a supplement. When I first took the transcender tests after reading the book I knew enough to BARELY pass if the transcender had been the real exam. After doing transcender over and over until I scored 100% then taking the real exam, I passed with a 900/1000 (766 required to pass).

A friend recommended that I purchase a Kinnaman MCSE study guide for my first exam. I have since passed two tests, currently studying for my third. These books are all you need to pass.

This is a concise book which will get you passed on the 70-058 exam and teach you something along the way. You could pass the exam with just this, but I would recommend pairing it with the Microsoft Press study guide as Kinnaman's networking essentials book has no test questions.

Product Strategy for High technology Companies by Robert Cooper. I purchased the book with the intention of getting my professional certification in product management. The is extremely helpful in the area of product planning and development. It links the technology strategy of a company to its product platform development strategy down to its product line planning strategy. I like the way the book is structured, building up from vision to techniques. His case studies / examples (though not in depth)are very good in illustrating what he was trying to say.

the Core Strategic Vision approach for determining strategy is interesting, and is a good framework to develop a realistic vision.
The boundaries test to determine whether your vision will deliver what you expect (it forces you to expect something!) is something companies can't forget.
And the vision of a set of product's as not only one offering, but as one containing a platform and its pre-planned offerings, with pricing strategy, is essential to get profits for a long time.
It is full with examples, specially from the software arena. Recommended.

This book offers a study of the strategic options for high tech firms. The coverage is wide and detailed. This is a great book.

A big number of business examples, and good explanation of concepts. A deeper vision could be found in another books about this subject, so in my oppinion this book could be a good starting point, not recomended for advanced IT product managers.

I love this book: the concept of a "vector" for product
development is a terrific way to think about competition.
IMHO, this book is a must-read for all product managers,
product marketers and people involved in strategic decisions,
i.e. all senior executives.

That said, speaking as a five-time startup engineer, the advice
and examples in this book seem geared towards the core product
lines in larger companies, where you can credibly talk about
"two years from now" as opposed to wondering if you'll even be
in business, which is also the problem for new product lines at
large companies. The experience for the book comes from the
PRTM consulting firm, which was made famous for their work with
parallel product development at Intel. We hired them in the
early days at Inktomi, and found mixed success with their
process because we were terrified of immediate failure, and
they wanted to talk about version 3. Obviously, there's a
successful middle ground because Inktomi was a huge success in
the short term, but ultimately lost its strategic direction.

This is an amazing book. It's not a tutorial for a building device driver. For device driver developers, it is an essential reference for understanding NT's kernel system. This book is also great for those who are not building device drivers but want to understand the NT kernel. The chapters on virtual memory, I/O architecture and I/O managers are totally worth the price of the book.

If you are writing Windows Device Drivers, this is one of 3 books you absolutely must have. Buy it.

Dear all,

We have an plotter printer HP 7550a and we run NT as operating system. There are no drivers for nt for this printer.

We now are trying to get this printer working under wp 5.1 because there are no printer drivers for NT.

Who can help me get the driver I am looking for. It does not matter if it is an NT driver or an corel wp5.1 driver.

Please help me we would realy appriciate this efford !

with kind regards,

Jeropen van Mourik

ING BANK Netherlands

This book is VERY well written and VERY readable. I needed other sources to get an actual driver written (see Chris Cant's book) but only because this book gives a much more complete picture and I needed something more specific. That's my point...if you want a good, solid understanding of the system and an excellent reference, get this book. It's not often one finds technical-minded people with such writing skill.

I think its a good book and well organized, my only black poing is that I missed a toolkit section like WinDriver-www.jungo.com- or numega that enable easy and quick development.

This was a great book - if I had just one book about Win 95, this would be it.

i have read the book for the 3rd edition but this was in my class Tim class some one stole the cd for the book so i couldnt do some of the things it sead to do so im just going to try to get the next best thing

Livingston & Straub combine thorough knowledge and casual writing skills nicely, resulting in an easy to find by, easy to follow and easy to execute by reference tome. A " Windows 95 Secrets " tweak, MaxMTU / DefaultRcvWindows, effected a software cost savings equal to the cover price!

Before you call me, look at 'Windows 95 Secrets' by Brian Livingston & Davis Straub, This book provides essential, and much undocumented information about Windows 95 features, installation, Plug and Play, boot files, the Windows desktop, relationships to DOS, networking, performance, and more. Helpful for everyone from the neophyte to the most intense power user. A great gift.

This excellent reference manual has become an indispensable corner stone of my computer library. Well written in clear and concise English the book is full of tips and tricks -- many of them undocumented by Microsoft. "Windows 95 Secrets" has helped me through a number of problematic situations including ones having to do with Network, modem, fax and printer setup and trouble shooting. If you are considering the purchase of only one Windows 95 reference book: this is the one.