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Rating: 
Summary: Response to "A reader from LLNL, CA"
Review: The first thing to say here is wow, someone has far too much time on their hands when they spend it putting the same Novell bashing review on every Novell book they can find. I won't spend my time trying to defend Novell (or atleast not too much), I'll just say that if you've worked with products from both companies (MS and Novell) then you know they both have strengths and weaknesses. As for email products a great example is if you run Exchange ask yourself this question, how much downtime has your company had in the last five years due to email viruses and how much did that downtime cost? I've been managing large Groupwise systems for that period of time and have yet to have any downtime due to viruses. Other downtime has been very minimal as well.
As for this specific book, Tay Kratzer is the 'goto' guy for Groupwise. If you're going to get an admin guide for Groupwise this would be the one to get.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must for GW Admin
Review: This is definetely the book you must have if you administer a GroupWise system. I have gone to the Novell course and have all of the material from it, but I use this manual 99% of the time. There are a few items that I wish they went more in-depth on or explained a bit better, but over-all everything is detailed quite well...plus the book is already 948 pages long so I will cut them some slack.
Rating: 
Summary: Novell fumbles the ball again...
Review: Years ago, Novell tried to fend off Microsoft by purchasing UNIX from AT&T. The resulting mess, called "UnixWare" was such an utter failure that Novell ended up selling UNIX to SCO. The acquisition cost Novell millions, upon millions, of dollars, with little or no return on investment. It reminds me of their acquisition of WordPerfect. Only in the case of WordPerfect, you could explain the acquisition as one mormon company coming to the rescue of another. Novell failed to learn from its mistake. It's now 2003 and Novell is trying to acquire Suse Linux. Perhaps they will call this version "LinuxWare." The only sure thing is that this product will, no doubt, bomb as horrifically as UnixWare. Hello? Is anybody home? Just like NetWare and UNIX, Netware and Linux are two completely different products. To think that they can be somehow melded together is to refute history. The only real question is who Novell will sell Suse to when they finally face the truth. Ever since its encounter with Windows NT, Novell has limped along as a legacy product kept on life support by a group of aging system admins. Certainly, very few people are building new Netware installs; they're just upgrading old ones. The truth is that cheaper alternatives abound. Alternatives which are easier to use. The market has spoken, and Novell is slowly fading into obscurity; just like OS/2. In light of all this, I cannot recommend that you purchase this book. This book is just Novell making a half-hearted attempt to convince people that they are still a viable server-side option. "Hey Look! You can still buy books on administering Novell, we're not dead yet." Novell will eventually do itself in, and this book will be about as useful as a broken lava lamp. One can only look back and wonder how the people at Novell let things get so far out of whack. Perhaps the mormons in Utah should allow themselves to drink beverages with caffeine. Just a thought...
Rating:
Summary: A must for the GW admin
Review: You can probably get by with the Groupwise newsgroup and the TIDs on Novell's website to configure and maintain your GW system, but its much easier to have all the info you need in one place. I bungled a test install and then another one, and then got it right when I read the book and understood why I was doing what I was doing. As for Novell's viability into the future, I'll stop buying and using Novell products when either I am dead or Novell is dead and not before. Novell products aren't as simple to set up as MS, but they are far more functional, robust, scalable and stable than any of the swill that the beast of Redmond pumps out. Buy Netware. Buy Groupwise, and buy the guides. Fire your MSCE's and hire CNEs.
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