Inside Windows 2000 Professional

Rating:
Summary: Good for users, lousy for administrators
Review: First, the book I have in front of me has the ISBN number, page count, and back cover blurb as the book above, but mine is entitled simply 'Windows 2000 Professional' and the cover shows manhole covers not a highway. I can't find it listed anywhere so I can only assume the publisher changed something along the way as I did get mine almost as soon as it came out. Perhaps the "Inside" moniker seemed more marketable. Certainly the "Inside" addition only makes the book even more mis-titled.

Anyway, the book is fine for newcomers to NT and folks moving from Win98. It is horrid as a book for administrators for which the back cover and intro claim it is intended. A perfect example is in Chapter 8, Managing the Computer where the author writes, "This chapter covers the maintenance tasks that most power users consider important. It does not discuss how to manage MS Windows 2000 Professional on networks, however, which is a big job that's better left to [other books]." The chapter includes three pages on how to use Event Viewer (among other trivial items).

Obviously any administrator with any knowledge of NT will find little of use here. There are some good tips and tidbits scattered about but they are not worth wading through all the hand holding for the casual user or new NT user. The author would have served the IT community better by simply putting those tidbits in a magazine article. There are too many other good Win2K Pro books out there to bother with this one. It is too bad because the author had a good concept and the book length was perfect but the execution is for the new NT user, barely for the power user, and certainly not for an administrator.

Rating:
Summary: Good for users, lousy for administrators
Review: First, the book I have in front of me has the ISBN number, page count, and back cover blurb as the book above, but mine is entitled simply 'Windows 2000 Professional' and the cover shows manhole covers not a highway. I can't find it listed anywhere so I can only assume the publisher changed something along the way as I did get mine almost as soon as it came out. Perhaps the "Inside" moniker seemed more marketable. Certainly the "Inside" addition only makes the book even more mis-titled.

Anyway, the book is fine for newcomers to NT and folks moving from Win98. It is horrid as a book for administrators for which the back cover and intro claim it is intended. A perfect example is in Chapter 8, Managing the Computer where the author writes, "This chapter covers the maintenance tasks that most power users consider important. It does not discuss how to manage MS Windows 2000 Professional on networks, however, which is a big job that's better left to [other books]." The chapter includes three pages on how to use Event Viewer (among other trivial items).

Obviously any administrator with any knowledge of NT will find little of use here. There are some good tips and tidbits scattered about but they are not worth wading through all the hand holding for the casual user or new NT user. The author would have served the IT community better by simply putting those tidbits in a magazine article. There are too many other good Win2K Pro books out there to bother with this one. It is too bad because the author had a good concept and the book length was perfect but the execution is for the new NT user, barely for the power user, and certainly not for an administrator.