Customer Reviews

70-646, Package: Windows Server 2008 Administrator with Lab Manual (Microsoft Official Academic Course Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm a faculty member at a community college, and I've been using this textbook since it first came out. I've been pretty happy with it, and so have most of my students. At least half of them take the 70-646 Microsoft exam in place of my final exam, and their pass rate is over 90%. The first semester I used it, 17 out of 20 students took and passed the exam, first time. Keep in mind that the book is part of a track, and if this is the first Microsoft course and textbook you have taken, you will be over your head. My recommendation is to take a basic networking course first, one that covers the fundamentals of addressing, host name resolution, etc, followed by a Windows 7 course. At that point this course should be a little less baffling. If you finish the track, you will be amazed at how all of the courses build upon and complement each other.

No class is going to turn you into a Server Administrator; that comes with experience and sweat. This course provides you with some of the building blocks for that career.

Wiley's MOAC textbooks are truly inferior products. I have had to read three of them. They are full of contradictions and typos. Even when they are technically correct they are so poorly written it's difficult to follow. There is no flow from the general to the specific. In no way should these products be directed toward a 1st or 2nd semester IT student. In fact, they shouldn't be directed toward ANY student. They are an affront to trees and the students that shell out big bucks. If you have to read one of these books, I recommend that you profoundly scale back your expectations for learning. That's just the textbooks. The lab books are even more useless. Approximately one third of the server labs just will not work and I've heard most of the labs in AD don't work. Whatever you do, don't pay full price for these books!

Okay it's a misnomer to view these books as simply paths to attain a legitimate Microsfot certifications. These books are graphically designed to convey all all the pertinent information to know how to navigate and manage the main features of using Windows Servers, whicd are the essential skill-based knowledge you need. If you want to study for the certification and get all the nunances an details then just study the cert prep books, but there's more to Microsoft than just knowing how to pass an exam, and these books are designed to teach you which is what you should be after first. These books are fantastic.

For the cover price Wiley feels justified charging, one would at the very least expect that the book would cover the 70-646 objectives. Unfortunately, using the 70-646 academic title alone will ensure nothing more than a wasted Prometric test fee and a frustrating, angry student. Don't believe me? Go through this book... learn the material... and then go take some of the officially sanctioned practice tests. I promise you that you'll feel as frustrated, angry, and scammed as I feel.

I've had the displeasure of being forced into using these books written by Craig

Zacker because of my college's Microsoft program. They are not suitable for test preparation or even as a simple introduction to the material covered. The ideas presented in the books are garbled and in-cohesive at best and give the appearance of a book thrown together from little excerpts or a copy and paste job from another book. Questions presented at the end of the chapter reading may not even be relevant to or answerable from the chapter reading. Typos, spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes cause you to do double-takes or question what is really trying to be conveyed. Avoid this author and these books as there are incredibly more effective ways to prepare for and take your microsoft exams; the publisher Wiley prints great training material under the Sybex name. Craig Zacker written technical manuals = Total Frustration with no gain.

It may have been used, but it was like new. It still had the cds in the back! Super fast shipping.

I have taken 3 classes, each one mapped to a certification test (70-640, 70-642, and 7-0646). We have used the Wiley books for all three. I have been cheated out of my academic experience. These books provide no overview of the topics included. They simply dump a large amount of highly detailed information and expect you to be able to put the pieces together. These books are not designed for students due to the simple fact that they assume too much prior knowledge of Windows desktop and server operating systems.

The accompanying lab books are also horrendous. The labs directly contradict best practices outlined in Technet articles (the 70-640 lab book, Lab 4 to be exact about one instance, and there are numerous more). Not only are the lab books filled with numerous typos, they are also fundamentally wrong in the application of Windows Server networking concepts. Furthermore, the naming conventions used in the book are impossible to keep straight. Your domain controllers are named RWDCxx and RWDCyy. Then they throw in the, and this is a direct quote, "In this lab you will see the characters zz. When you see these characters, substitute the two-digit number assigned to your computer", confusion. This would be confusing if two students were always doing a lab, but is more than difficult to keep straight if you are the only student completing the labs using two computers. Which brings me to my next point. These labs were not designed to be completed by a single student. This is an epic failure. Anyone who has been a student in the past knows that the learning environment is not ideal, and a lab partner may not be available for some, or all, of the labs.

They also mention instructor resources in the description of this book. Those are a joke and most definitely an epic failure. The power point slides given to the instructors are nothing more than a list of steps to complete tasks which are already printed in the book. They include nothing in the way of summary notes regarding the material prevented. I mean this literally when I say it. Some minimum wage employee at Wiley simply ran copy / paste operations in PowerPoint to make these slides.

If you are not forced to buy this book, don't waste your money on it. You will not, under any circumstances, be ready to pass the certification tests mapped to these books. The failure rate for students in my classes is 100%. You will fail too because this book is an epic failure. It has devalued the paper it was printed on and is a disgrace to the IT community.

If you have to use a textbook, buy one from Course Technology. Their labs are also a joke, but the text is worth reading. If you want to pass your certification tests, pick up Windows Server 2008 Inside Out as a starter. Then read a second or third book that pertains to your specific certification test. Good examples would be the Exam Cram books, or the books from Sybex. Hands on knowledge is the best teacher. Get a licensed copy of Windows Server 2008, install it, and start learning.

I want to update my evaluation of this book because my instructor obtained the lab errata to correct the NUMEROUS MISTAKES. Even the lab errata are crap. The page references are wrong, and they don't reference the actual lab being done (such as Lab 4, Project 4.2, Part B, step 5). Everyone at Wiley publishing is a low rate minimum wage employee that is only doing just enough to get fired. Their books are crap. Don't ever buy them because they are a waste of money. The FAILURE rate for students taking the MCITP exams for our classes is 100%.