Rating: 
Summary: Too Wordy and Redundent
Review: Don't waste your time on this book. Author repeats himself, and covers a lot of stuff that are less relevant. Book not well organized.
Rating:
Summary: Too Wordy and Redundent
Review: Don't waste your time on this book. Author repeats himself, and covers a lot of stuff that are less relevant. Book not well organized.
Rating:
Summary: Looks worth buying at first glance...
Review: First of all let me say that I am not an expert in any of Microsoft OSes (although I am a NT Server 4.0 MCP currently working on the 2K curriculum). However, I consider this book to be aimed at a buyer's mass of which I am a part. Now for the book: As with Microsoft's study guide for NT 4.0, this book seems to be well organized and well written at first glance. For instance, each subtopic starts with a overview of which practical skills you are about to acquire. Also, at the end of each subtopic you will find a summary. These neatly provide for "mental hooks" to hang the new material on to. The problem is, however, that the main bulk of text is rather poorly written. I find it rather messy to be quite frank with you. Let me speak metaphorically here: To complete a puzzle, a person A would start by finding to pieces that matched and put them together. After that she would probably try to find another piece to be connected to any of the previous two. After only 10 pieces or so are fitted together, things become easier because she would spot a certain pattern. Person B clings to the Microsoft way of solving the same puzzle: Once two pieces are fitted together, these are put aside and the search starts for a completely separate pair of pieces that matches. Which one method would you, the reader, prefer? As for myself I would claim the first method to be a logical and well-structured step-by-step process (or should I say piece-by-piece :-)) making it easy to assimilate new pieces into the ongoing puzzle. For the Microsoft method, things are quite blurry while pieces are being put together in separate pairs. With a complete set of pairs, there remains the important task of putting all the pairs together to make up the complete puzzle. Using the first method, the puzzle will be completed in due time and this is where a lucid and well-written book ends. Mission accomplished. Using the Microsoft method, you get to a point where you sit there with your bunch of separate pairs, and at this point the Microsoft book ends. After reading each subtopic in the Microsoft-book your mind is filled only with fragments of knowledge, and it is up to you to put these fragments together into real knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible book if you want to learn Exchange 2000
Review: I bought this book to get me up to speed with Exchange 2000 and it is a horrible buy. The author jumps all over the map with concepts and ideas. He does not define concepts or definitions clearly (or at all) and does not build upon them very well. Buy the Administrator's Companion by Microsoft Press. It is a better purchase if you want to use it as a learning guide for your MCSE.
Rating: 
Summary: The book is OK
Review: I got this book & the Sybex study guide along with eval copies of Ex2k & Exchange 5.5 locked myself away for a couple weeks and passed with an 800. The book does jump all over that place in so far as it doesn't read like a novel, but there is good information on the product and testing objectives. I have used Exchange since version 4 and was overwhelmed with Ex2k when I first started studying. The book has plenty of exercises through out that emphasize the objectives. Some of the exercises seemed a little simple for someone going for a certification but most had good content. The CD comes with AVI demonstrations of the exercises which along with my test lab helped me understand and retain the concepts.
The book is not all encompassing because of the way Ex2k depends on and interacts with Win2k. There is no way any one book could be - along with course work, lab work, and experience with Exchange 5.5 the book makes a good attempt at covering the topics on the 70-224 exam. The exam is do-able. This book along with the Ex2k resource kit, Ex2k online help, and MS white papers as well as experience with the product is a good preparation for the exam.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: I recently worked on a Win2K/E2K project for a new n/w of approx 150 Users. My area of specialization is W2K and a work mate was dealing with E2K Side. We were scheduled to go live within 3 weeks when my colleague got faced with major family problems, hence wasn't going to be available for atleast 2 months. I've worked with Exch 5.5 in the past at a very high level, but hadn't dealt with E2K. Being the Head Engineer of the project i was in a fix, my first reaction was to obtain an external contractor, but obtaining an E2K expert was close to impossible. I decided to buy an E2K book, let me tell this book is God sent, I setup a lab as specified in the book and started reading aggressively mainly at night after work. Within 3-4 days i was ready to start the installation. I used the hardware requirement section to allocate the correct RAID drives for Exchange servers, installed Exchange, edited to default recipient policy to assign first.last e-mail addresses (%g.%s@emaildomain.com), created user mailboxes, OWA, Routing Group Connector (btn the 2 sites), public folder replication and even configured an instant Messaging server :-). The ebook installed on my laptop was great for quick references while onsite as i didn't want to carry a training kit to the clients site considering they were paying top dollar for the project. I wrote a detailed disaster recovery document using information in the disaster recovery section. My value has increased greatly since successfully completing this project, thanks to this book. Am not yet an E2K GURU but it won't be long before I become one. Guys if u plan to deploy E2K make sure this book is part of your collection.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good Study Guide
Review: I thought was a very good Training Kit for the 224 exam. One of the included CDs had .avi's showing all Practice Exercise's that were very usefully incase you dont have access to test equipment. The book was well written and I did not found any blatant errors. For my test prep, I used this and the Exchange 2000 Resource Kit. The training kit provided a great overall coverage and example exercises. The Resource Kit then was able to pound the deeper more technical aspects into my brain. Again I will go back to the exercises and .avi's. I personally dont have a cluster server to test on, but the training guide steps you through the install and configure process, while you watch it on video. The book also includes an eval copy of Exchange 2000 Enterprise and Outlook 2000
Rating: 
Summary: Lacking - buy something else
Review: I used this book for my main study guide for the exam, supplemented with other text and my own four years of Exchange experience. I expected it to be fairly concise and in depth, based on other recent MS training kits. Someone dropped the ball here, though, by publishing this. Exchange is a vast piece of software, and this book seems to reflect that at first glance. As I read it and went through the many, many hands-on exercises, I noticed a trend: tedious, intricate steps for the hands-on stuff, but very little technical depth anywhere, certainly not enough to pass the exam. All too often, important concepts are given a short paragraph or a couple of pages, written in a cluttered tone, and then a long, long step-by-step excercise that shows you what to do but rarely why you are doing it, something you need to know for the exam. I kept wondering which thing Kay Unkroth didn't understand: her audience, or her subject? This book does a good job in one respect: it gives an introduction to the material for the exam. They should cut much of the fluff and add detail for the next edition if they want to make this worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Lacking - buy something else
Review: I used this book for my main study guide for the exam, supplemented with other text and my own four years of Exchange experience. I expected it to be fairly concise and in depth, based on other recent MS training kits. Someone dropped the ball here, though, by publishing this. Exchange is a vast piece of software, and this book seems to reflect that at first glance. As I read it and went through the many, many hands-on exercises, I noticed a trend: tedious, intricate steps for the hands-on stuff, but very little technical depth anywhere, certainly not enough to pass the exam. All too often, important concepts are given a short paragraph or a couple of pages, written in a cluttered tone, and then a long, long step-by-step excercise that shows you what to do but rarely why you are doing it, something you need to know for the exam. I kept wondering which thing Kay Unkroth didn't understand: her audience, or her subject? This book does a good job in one respect: it gives an introduction to the material for the exam. They should cut much of the fluff and add detail for the next edition if they want to make this worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: A MS Press Book With 10 Mistakes About A MS Product
Review: Ten mistakes can be found in the book some small and some large like how many stores and storage groups can be found in a 2000 Exchange Server product. Instead of twenty as a total the number given is 96, now thats not just a typo.
Wordy at 1000 pages and skips around way too much.
Read the reference book instead, you will learn more. Really a poor job, especially for MS Press.
| 
