4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good learning material but three editions show little change, December 5, 2010
This review is from: Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop (Paperback)
I reviewed this title several years ago and highlighted the excellent training material and structure it provides. My view on that remains. However, this book has literally 99% the same content and structure of the earlier editions, so if you are looking for new material you wil be disappointed. The software changes relating to the training examples are largely cosmetic, one or two modified dialogs and toolbars. Nothing of substance.
Also, there is no requirement to purchase this book to obtain the 180-day evaluation software (which is ArcGIS 10 Editor version). Indeed, it is no longer bundled with the book, you have to download the 3.9Gb file, but you also get the evaluation key, so this latest edition is unnecessary.
My advice is, save yourself a whole lot of money, buy an older version and obtain the software via download. There is so little change to the book you will not be disadvantaged. Amazon currently (Dec 2010) has used editions from $17.13.
ESRI Press could have provided an 'update' pdf of changes, but I doubt it would have got beyond a page!
IanO - UK
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ArcGIS Tutorials Galore, June 1, 2011
This review is from: Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop (Paperback)
This book is 592 pages of ArcGIS tutorials. If you like tutorials, then this is the book for you. These tutorials will walk you through anything you would ever want to do with ArcGIS, in painful detail. I was new to ArcGIS before reading this book, it's a complex and powerful program. This book is meant to be read cover to cover, unlike most software manuals & books where you can just jump to what you need to learn. So,.. if you need to learn ArcGIS then this book is for you, but if you just need to learn specific tasks/ tools/ functions this is probably not the book that you want.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great software - horrible bugs with loading the trial service, April 7, 2011
This review is from: Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop (Paperback)
I spent over 6 hours trying to load the trial service and it would not authenticate. I had to go to the computer lab at my school and have them authenticate it...not very user friendly. Now that I'm in, and learning the program, the book is great!
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