Rating: 
Summary: The Ultimate WSH book for System Administrators
Review: I won't claim this is the only scripting book you should ever buy. I WILL claim that it is the WSH "missing manual" for system administrators. The short story is that it provides comprehensive, in-depth coverage of WSH admin scripting with excellent code examples, and as such is a rare combination of instructional use and long-term reference value. Personally, I haven't thought a book on WSH in the last three years was worth buying; this is the one I've been waiting for.As a comprehensive reference, this book stands alone. System administrators have been historically short-changed when it comes to scripting books; most written for Windows tend to be generically focused on languages rather than on the details of WSH, and usually cover only a handful of the technologies. This one is written by scripters who appear to use it every day, and they cover the breadth of topics: interactions with everything from system logs to ADSI to WMI. Although the code is almost entirely in VBScript, the focus is on application, not language tricks. If you want to any other Active Scripting language as your host, the code is plain vanilla enough to be easily translated. In providing depth, the authors had some special advantages and they used them to the hilt. It was written by Microsoft insiders who know the internals of the technologies such as COM, ADSI, and WMI which well-rounded scripting uses. When covering the range of topics for admin scripters, the authors pushed explaining the why and how in unequaled detail, and made liberal use of charts for explaining difficult concepts where appropriate. Coding quality is a critical factor as far as I am concerned in any book about programming or scripting; after all, good code is the test of a good coder, and in a book on scripting it shows that the author knows more than just the layout of a few random object models. Even judged on this alone, Microsoft's "Windows 2000 Scripting Guide" sparkles. Most topical scripting books have appalling code style; not this one. Code is explained carefully, and with few exceptions is written in the form of well-wrapped procedures which can be dropped into your own scripts and used as-is - variables are declared, input/output is separated from calculations, and most importantly, the procedures appear to be written with the explicit goal of making purpose and technique clear for the reader. There are very few books out there which do an enduring job of teaching a concept, showing useful code, and providing critical reference material. This book does all three; if you get it, it will be your main WSH scripting sourcebook for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Where has this book been?
Review: I'm not the sharpest tack in the box but I do know how to read and am able to comprehend the material at hand. I have attempted to read three other publications dealing with VBScripting and WSH only to loose interest because something was missing. It was the rest of the story! Within the first twenty-five pages of this book the veil was lifted and the sun shown bright! This is a must have publication for anyone desiring to learn and use VBScripting for network administration.
Rating: 
Summary: Great resource, but TYPOS?!?
Review: If you want to write a script on how to find the cosine of an angle, this *isn't* your book. This is specifically geared to system administrators to make our lives significantly easier. If you don't know anything about scripting, this is a great resource to get you started. It starts with the basics of VBScript, adds in things like WMI and WSH, and brings it all together for you to get work done. If you already know scripting, this is a great reference book. The most horrible thing (and what caused the 4 stars) is that there are an unacceptable number of typos in this book. Of course, if you are reading this, it's fairly easy to see these errors because the code and description don't make sense together...
Rating:
Summary: Great resource, but TYPOS?!?
Review: If you want to write a script on how to find the cosine of an angle, this *isn't* your book. This is specifically geared to system administrators to make our lives significantly easier. If you don't know anything about scripting, this is a great resource to get you started. It starts with the basics of VBScript, adds in things like WMI and WSH, and brings it all together for you to get work done. If you already know scripting, this is a great reference book. The most horrible thing (and what caused the 4 stars) is that there are an unacceptable number of typos in this book. Of course, if you are reading this, it's fairly easy to see these errors because the code and description don't make sense together...
Rating: 
Summary: Factually Correct but Completely Useless
Review: Like the old joke, MSFT press delivers a complete set of information, but in a form that makes it completely worthless. Everything you would ever need to know about WSH, ADSI, LDAP, and VBscripting for Windows 2000 is in this book. But the writing is excruciatingly dull (tedium ad-nauseum), the organization of the material is non-existent, and it has a very poor index. All of that makes getting the information you need, when you need it, very difficult (or a matter of luck). Seriously, this book is so execrably written and edited (and badly organized) that I think MSFT should either outsource its publishing, or just exit the book publishing business all together. Putting out mountains of gobbledegook and jabberwocky is bad for MSFT's public imagem (the main beneficiaries are the independents who seem to live for the purpose of attacking MSFT). I suspect MSFT realized how bad it is, since no people are named as authors or editors. No surprise: after all, there's nothing worse for a writer or editor's career than a book like this. One that is both un-readably dull and so badly organized that is seems to be a bunch of scrambled ''post-it notes'' strung together. There are better books for WSH, LDAP, ADSI, and VBscripting in Windows 2000, from other I/S book publishers.
Rating:
Summary: Not for me...
Review: This book if obvisouly ... but it's way over my head. I'm just starting to script. I'm keeping this book because it's obvious it will be a real help to me later, but I'm looking for a more beginner's guide to start with, and then maybe some of this stuff will make sense. If you already know VB Script and have been using it for a while than this book will probably be your favorite.
Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint of heart!
Review: This book is massive! I will hand it to the reader from Indy that there are some typos, but every book I have seen that contains code has typos. Usually, this is attributed to the fact that the person(s) who edit the book, don't understand the material. Most coders are not good editors, and most editors are not good coders. Putting that aside, I found this book to be an extremely valuable REFERENCE. I put that in caps because if you try to read it from cover to cover, you will wind up in a mental facility making little wicker baskets. That's probably what happened to the editors. ;) In addition to typos, these books frequently suffer from very bad indexes. The accompanying CD compensates for this shortcoming by providing a fully searchable electronic version of the book. This book is a must-have, but it is not the scripting book to start with. If you are just starting, get Stanek's Windows 2000 Scripting Bible.
Rating:
Summary: A great combination between tech & examples
Review: This book is one of the best invesment of my sysAdmin life. The book cover all the technologies of windows scripting providing a lot of great & simple examples. If you want to start in the Scripting world it is your book. Notice that this book need a reader with a elemental skills in development to be really usefull. The first time you can read it page by page, but, if you know developing you will be notice that this book is usefull used like a reference manual.
Rating:
Summary: The Scripting Guys rock!
Review: This book rates a '5' for me due to the abundance of _usable_ scripting examples. Most scripting books I've read (and I own _several_) have completely useless examples of things no system administrator would find necessary to accomplish (Hello World ad nauseam). My job often requires that I write VBScripts and I always reference this book when trying to determine a solution. As a matter of fact, the CD version gets launched immediately after my scripting editor when I'm coding. These guys _know_ scripting and it shows in the primers and explanations of the code. It's been very helpful to have the 'plain English' step-throughs provided with each coding sample. It's not unusual for me to find the exact snippet of code I need and just copy and paste it into my own scripts. That's a real time saver! Their use of Hungarian notation as a variable naming convention helps keep the code easy to read, debug and professional looking. When I've passed scripts on to 'real' developers, they often express their appreciation for that. (I've scripted enterprise solutions taken from the book that had stumped our developers). The WMI scripting tool, Scriptomatic (and the downloadable EZADScriptomatic for ADSI scripting...) are real time-savers as well. I've found them very helpful in learning the capabilities of the technologies. To reiterate: the Scripting Guys _ROCK_!
Rating:
Summary: Superb Explanations on Key Technologies
Review: This book will work for even a novice, who knows nothing of scripting. That is perhaps why the book is so thick, as it is chalk full of valuable explanations. I find the material and organization to be very excellent. For the more advanced users, those with perhaps UNIX scripting, perl, development, etc. background, they can quickly skim through introductory material and get on to the more advanced topics, such as ADSI and WMI.
This book has real world practical and immediately useful material for WSH, ADSI, and WMI. The WSH does have a lot of coverage on the Internet and published books, but for trickier technologies like WMI and ADSI, I find this book's well written explanations and overall coverage most invaluable. I liked for instance that in Active Directory coverage using ADSI, there was intuitive coverage of scripting the various providers (LDAP, GC, WinNT) and coverage of using ADO to get at Active Directory info. through either LDAP or SQL queries.
Generally speaking, there are some areas of Windows where certain functionality and features are not accessible through the command-line or GUI, one can get at it through scripting with material presented in this book. There are other areas, where it can be tedious to do certain tasks through the GUI on several desktops, such as printer setup, inventory of hardware in a company, or account maintenence; I was able to automate these chores through choice tidbits found in the book.
Overall, I find this book imensely useful, especially for administrative chores. And for novices wanting to get into scripting, this is indeed THE book.
| 
