Customer Reviews

Introduction to Information Technology

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you want a general IT book then don't even think about buying this one, despite its title. This is a textbook for college business majors, and looks at things from the business angle.

The book is less suitable for non-student readers. It is geared for use by a lecturer who can draw attention to the important concepts underlying the field of IT, and can steer students to useful supplementary material.

The book races across the surface of the whole field of IT. The authors have packed in a lot of material, but at a cost. The explanations may be good enough for students to answer a quiz about the various buzzwords, but there is not enough space here to cover anything in depth. The students, and you, may be left without a clear idea of what the words really mean.

At the other end of the scale, the book struggles to make plain the broad sweep of IT concepts. Although the authors try hard, ideas tend to get lost amidst the large number of factoids.

One book is never going to be enough to cover all of IT. Your choices are to be more selective about which area you want to learn about, to pick a book which is more clearly aimed at being a simple overview, or to buy this book and work really hard at following up its leads to other material to fill in the gaps.

It's a shame that such an expensive, college-level textbook written by three university members and published by Wiley could be so full of errors and sheer unprofessionalism. This review refers specifically to the 2007 edition of this book.

There are multiple glaring technical errors throughout the book and accompanying material. For instance, as a key example the book states that a 16 MHz Intel 80386 computer with 1MB of RAM and DOS 3.31 cost $5,200 without a monitor in 1998 (just nine years ago). This statement, and others that I noticed throughout the book, are wholly inaccurate and it is a real disservice that students are expected to learn false facts and misinformation. Typos and grammatical errors are also scattered amongst the material. Everything about the book and material seems hurriedly slapped together, with little consideration for proofreading. The PowerPoint slides likewise contain mistakes and seem cheaply done. On the accompanying site, ClubIT assignments are available and a number of these are also poorly thought out and unchecked for errors (sometimes complete questions are missing from the worksheets yet students are expected to answer follow-up questions based on the nonexistent material).

Aside from the technical errors throughout the book, I also found the writing to be tedious to read due to the monotonous-like style used. Also, so much material is discussed at such a rapid rate that it becomes impossible to comprehend all of it, but as the title suggests you do get a very general overview of information systems but not detailed information about any given technical subject.

Any positive aspects of this book will forever be overshadowed by its errors, and if I were a professor I would demand a full refund for every copy of this book purchased. A 2009 edition is in the works, but it remains unclear whether or not the new edition will fix any of the existing errors or if it will simply add more material onto the abundance of material already covered throughout the book. Either way, this edition was enough to convince me to stay away from any other books written by these authors.

This book is intended for a read on topics of MIS (Management Information Systems), a predominantly Management subject, that analyses solutions for Business challenges through the effective usage of Information Technology. Though it is titled differently, its coverage of the MIS topics is reasonably sufficient.

I actually was assigned the newer edition of this book for class. I bought this book to save money and found out that the book has exactly the same information and if more than i need to complete assignments.

I have to say that I was looking for a book that would give me a better understanding of everything encompassing information technology and this book is it. I am making a career change and needed to get a better foundation of the IT field from an overall viewpoint so that when I start interviewing I can understand what is being asked and how to speak intelligently about it. This is a great book for anyone who needs to start building a foundation of knowledge in IT.

The book was shipped really fast. This was a great buy for me.

It was incredible. I ordered it on wednesday night, it was shipped on friday and I got it during the weekend. Besides the book was new in perfect conditions! Thank you.