Introducing Windows 2000 Server

Rating:
Summary: A good tool for those transitioning from NT 4.0
Review: As an MCSE who feels comfortable with NT 4.0, the advent of Windows 2000 brings some feelings of anxiety. Though this book doesn't delve into the "how to" administrative tasks with Active Directory and other daily tasks that will be common, the author painted a good picture of how NT 2000 will be different. This book is an excellent tool for those who are wanting to gain an introduction (hence the title). I would especially recommend this for Business Analysts or any Sales force who wants to learn the new lingo and imporvements that Microsoft has made. It gives a good overview for those who know networking on what's new and what's there. That is what the book is. For those seeking an insightful "how to do" systematic approach of the Beta software, you will not get it here. It is an easy read and worth it's price.

Rating:
Summary: A good tool for those transitioning from NT 4.0
Review: As an MCSE who feels comfortable with NT 4.0, the advent of Windows 2000 brings some feelings of anxiety. Though this book doesn't delve into the "how to" administrative tasks with Active Directory and other daily tasks that will be common, the author painted a good picture of how NT 2000 will be different. This book is an excellent tool for those who are wanting to gain an introduction (hence the title). I would especially recommend this for Business Analysts or any Sales force who wants to learn the new lingo and imporvements that Microsoft has made. It gives a good overview for those who know networking on what's new and what's there. That is what the book is. For those seeking an insightful "how to do" systematic approach of the Beta software, you will not get it here. It is an easy read and worth it's price.

Rating:
Summary: Avoid in most cases
Review: Based on the contents of this book, Microsoft should be giving it away rather than selling it. We don't mean that comment to be an extreme criticism but it just doesn't make sense to charge so much for something that is essentially a glorified sales manual.

It's definitely easy to read but also probably too easy. You'll finish reading this book and find yourself asking, "Is that all?" Don't even attempt to bring this book along as a resource when you go to deploy Windows 2000.

If does serve a purpose of preparing people in sales roles for product. If used for that, it does the job quite well. However for most other uses, you'll definitely find better books.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to read intro but too expensive
Review: Bought this book last night - read the whole thing. It's only 175 pages in length - and the type is big.

Anyway - it reads like the speaker notes from a Powerpoint presentation. It does a good job of telling you what's new, but there's no meat. Techies are going to get frustrated, when I read about a cool feature I was always left with - "Well how does that work?"

Some of the figures are very sad - they obviously struggled to come up with graphics. For instance - they show the lineage of NT by drawing four boxes with an arrow going through them all - NT 3.1 to NT 3.5 to NT 4 etc. On the other hand - in the brief discussion on WMI they have a killer graphic (page 52) with no real explanation of flow.

In short - this is a detailed readme file. Short on specifics - but a very high level view of new functionality. Once the "real" books kick in this will have zero worth - which is a negative. Sales people will love it - they'll get up to speed on the "lingo" in the couple of hours it takes to read this book.

Mind you - I enjoyed it's overview - and therefore, 3 stars. If you really want to know how this stuff works you'll need the "Windows 2000 Beta training kit" - if you only buy one, make it the latter.

For the record here is what I mean by high level:

Active Directory gets 21 pages, IIS 5 gets 8 pages, Network infrastructure gets 21 pages, ZAW gets 16 pages, File system and storage management gets 11 pages,

Security gets 13 pages, Distributed Services (DHCP/WINS/DNS) gets 15 pages.

Hope that helps!

Rating:
Summary: Easy to read intro but too expensive
Review: I read this book in a day. It's a good overview of what's new in Windows 2000 Server but not terribly deep. However, it is overpriced for what it is -- MS Press should just have combined this book with the one on 2000 Workstation and knocked ten bucks off. Also, it's kinda clear there isn't much revolutionary in 2000 Server anyway. Windows is finally catching up with things Netware has done for years and mainframes for decades.