Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit (Pro - Resource Kit)

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!
Review: As a new Sharepoint Administrator, this book has been a valuable tool during the implementation process of my site. Bill does a great job of explaining some of the more difficult to understand features in language that is easy for even beginners such as myself to follow. If your task is to implement a new Sharepoint site, this book will be your best friend.

Rating:
Summary: Late but well worth the wait.
Review: Bill English and crew have come through. Haven't completely digested it yet(1172 pages) but my initial take is that it is worth the investment. Easy reading for a technical tome. The first six parts, Chapters 1 - 18, provide everything you need to design, setup, and configure your solution. Parts VII through XI, Chapters 19 - 42, provide specific details for customizing, managing, and maintaining your implementation.

Rating:
Summary: Expected a lot, got a little less
Review: Bill English is the God (with a capital 'G') of SharePoint. Hence, a lot is expected. He travels the whole of the United States, and parts of Europe (if the UK can be said to be part of Europe) preaching the gospel of SharePoint.

This book is the result of a 'massive collaborative effort' involving himself and the best that Microsoft has to offer, and the book, in the absence of godhood and the strategic-ness of the product, is pretty magnificent.

Hence my dismay, given that Bill English IS a God, and that SharePoint (in both WSS and SPS guise) is more strategic than capturing Osama Bin Laden, that the book is not a repository of fabulous IT revelations. It's a comprehensive, but highly conventional iteration over the menus from the Central Admin blahdeeblah.

I was hoping I'd be able to figure out why my virtual servers were blowing up and why, simple as it ought to be, I can't just join my damned server to the farm.

Bloggers, note the opportunity!!!

Rating:
Summary: Indepth AND good
Review: I hadn't even heard of SharePoint until a few months ago. It seems to be everywhere in everything we're doing at the office now. Inevitable double whammy they decide to finally upgrade to Windows Server 2003 at the same time we try to SharePoint. I picked up the SharePoint Resource Kit and Windows Server 2003 Inside Out and haven't looked back. Both turned out to be excellent choices.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the investment for your SharePoint team...
Review: I have been using the Microsoft Resource Kits on many products over the past 10 years and the SharePoint 2003 kits is one of the most comprehensive produced to date for a Microsoft application. The book is designed as a resource Kit to pull together all relevant information in one location.

Our company placed an order on Amazon.ca as soon the SharePoint Resource Kit was listed as the early SharePoint 2003 printed documentation was sparse and the book was a welcome addition. We found it better to have a paper book with all the information in one location rather than just links to websites, whitepapers, and webcasts to rely upon alone. We now have 3 copies for our project teams to used for their SharePoint work as well as the Internet resources.

I found the structure of the book confusing at first as we used it to help learn the product but now it is a great daily resource. The Adobe PDF manual and several tools are included on the CD-ROM and are great for finding support materials in a jiffy.

Yes, its a buy...

Rating:
Summary: Indepth AND good
Review: I've been an IT professional since 1995, and over the years, the Micsrsoft Resource Kits have tended to be my bibles for the most in-depth, thorough information. But they've been slipping and slipping badly in recent years, and the seem to have less and less to say that isn't just as easy and user friendly to download off of MS.com. Well this book is a TRUE TREASURE. While there is a decent amount of okay Sharepoint information on MS.com, this is an in-depth, invaluable users manual for the real world that beautifully puts a ton of critical information in one place and with depth. It frames and organized everything I've been struggling with (and the list was pretty darned long) with an otherwise great product experience with SharePoint. It's back to the classic era of MS Resource Kits: if you are deploying and managing SharePoint, this kit is a MUST HAVE. Keep it up Microsoft--is there any way you can get the writers who did this book to create a similar effort for Windows 2003?

Rating:
Summary: Restores my Faith in Microsoft Resource Kits
Review: I've been an IT professional since 1995, and over the years, the Micsrsoft Resource Kits have tended to be my bibles for the most in-depth, thorough information. But they've been slipping and slipping badly in recent years, and the seem to have less and less to say that isn't just as easy and user friendly to download off of MS.com. Well this book is a TRUE TREASURE. While there is a decent amount of okay Sharepoint information on MS.com, this is an in-depth, invaluable users manual for the real world that beautifully puts a ton of critical information in one place and with depth. It frames and organized everything I've been struggling with (and the list was pretty darned long) with an otherwise great product experience with SharePoint. It's back to the classic era of MS Resource Kits: if you are deploying and managing SharePoint, this kit is a MUST HAVE. Keep it up Microsoft--is there any way you can get the writers who did this book to create a similar effort for Windows 2003?

Rating:
Summary: Great resource
Review: It's hard to find a good resource soup-to-nuts on things like search and many configuration items. This book does a great job of explaining quite a few items. It's also very helpful in developing user documentation as many steps are clearly spelled out. The CD it comes with contains quite a few very helpful web parts and utilities. This is a must on any SharePoint admin's bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: I suggest a pass
Review: SharePoint as a technology is a tremendous product. This book, however, does not come close to doing it justice. I found the verbiage to be incoherent in various places, and occasionally terms were simply never defined. Further, at one point the author says "At the time we had to go to press with this chapter, the information on how to use Microsoft SharePoint Server 2003 extranets was in the beta stages of being written"... When I purchased this book about SharePoint products and technologies, I assumed the author would be able to write about SharePoint portal server 2003 without requiring other authors to pave the way. In short, this book seems to be a repurposing of information from other sources in a pell-mell fashion. Consequently I cannot recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book for Administrators and Developers
Review: This book is very thorough. There's some great chapters on customization and server management; information that has been non-existent until Microsoft released this book. I have bought every book available for my team and this is the only one that covers SharePoint as deep on the topics of administration, search, configuration and architecture. The Book-CD has a lot more as well. My team references this book frequently. To me, it's the first true SharePoint administrator's book available.