microsoft

I found this book to be very average. It glosses over subjects poorly, giving me the impression that the author doesn't have a great understanding of the topics discussed. If there wasn't other great books available, or superb video sites like winstructor.com I would then recommend this. But seeing as books like Mastering Windows Server 2003 and Introducing Windows Server 2003 exist and of course winstructor, then I cannot comprehend why someone would feel they got their money's worth with a purchase of this title.

I have just purchased the Windows Server 2003 Bible and like the other Bible, it is has a lot of pages, open to interpretation, full of errors and out of date information. For example, Quantum hard drives are a recommended quality drive to purchase. I have no disagreement with the word quality, but Quantum haven't been around for a while and it seems like hardware information wasn't update from the draft copy. This then set the tone of the book. I also found it difficult to read as it seems very disjointed and poorly proof-read with the operating system being called Windows 2003 Server and .Net Server in the same paragraph. This book seems to be based more on Windows XP than the server version. Overall an extremely poor performance.
I have a colleague I don't like so now I have the perfect gift.

I thought this book was awesome! It touched on the features of Server 2003 and how it has changed since Windows 2000 Server. If you are an application developer who writes programs for Server 2003 or a System Admin - I highly recommend this book!