Customer comments on this selection.
 Pretty Good
Overall a good intro to Server 08 networking. I learned a fair amount on various Windows related subjects and there weren't Too many editing errors, and only one of the answers to the quiz questions made no sense after the explanation in the back of the book. Pretty good record for this type of material.
Almost enough
I you are planning on taking the certification exam will get you MOST of the way there.
 Do you want to be a virtual network superstar?
This book is not designed to teach you windows networking on Server 2008. After you've completed reading the book and doing all the exercises you'll probably be ready for an exam of some sort. But will you actually be ready to set up a network on some real machines (virtual machines don't count)? Anybody can set up a network between two or three virtual Server 2008 machines (I've done that on Win XP Home) and after following this book you'll be quite an expert in that sort of thing. But nothing more; you may even get a MCTS certificate. The authors (or Microsoft Press) have decided against any sort of skill building with a comprehensive framework and instead have chosen to offer discrete bits of learning without any coherence between the nuggets of learning found within the pages. Employers will soon find out that "paper" MCSEs haven't gone away; they've simply been replaced by virtual machine network "pros." Sometimes a little learning is a dangerous thing.
Does the job
This is a good book for learning Windows Server 2008 network infrastructure from the beginning, or brushing up what you already know from Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003. It is a long book, and yes, it is a bit dry (as one of the other reviewers said), but I wouldn't ding the authors for that. Let's face it, this material IS dry, and you can't really pump any sunshine into it to make it any thing else than that. Having said that, if you are really going to be a Windows networking professional, you MUST know this material thoroughly. I used this book as part of the material I studied to help me successfully pass the 70-649 Windows Server 2008 upgrade test, and it would be equally good to help you pass that, or the stand alone 70-642 Windows Server 2008 network infrastructure test. Make sure that you do the hands-on exercises. Set yourself up a training lab using either Virtual Server 2005 R2 or Hyper-V and play with this stuff until you know it well. You can read and read and read, but there is no substitute for getting actual hands-on experience, and with virtual machines, there is no reason not to get lots of hands-on experience. If you don't have a subscription to TechNet Plus (highly recommended for anyone who is a network professional), then download a free evaluation copy of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition from the Microsoft web site. There are a few mistakes and corrections that are cleaned up by an errata page located at: [...] Enjoy!
 Good start, but it falls apart at the end
It seems to be a recurring theme among the Microsoft Press books I've been studying for the Windows Server 2008 exams: they get off to a great start with rich information and good detail, but then 1/2 to 2/3 through the book, it's like somebody flipped a switch and can't wait to get the book done. They hurry through what's left with pages of "recipe" step-by-step examples explaining how to do tasks, but not WHY you should do something this way instead of that way. As this book gets to the end, the coverage is sparse. No way do I feel near ready for the exam. Hands on is an essential ingredient in learning this material and being ready for the exam, and I'll do that on my own, but I still expect a better job than this book does for exam prep. Specifically, the chapters on NAP, Connecting to Networks, and Managing Files are very weak.
Interestingly, several of the authors in the MS Press series have contributed to portions of several of the books, and some of them have done books for earlier versions, like Windows 2003. Don't rest on your laurels guys! You gotta do better!
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