Customer Reviews

MCSE Windows 2000 Network Exam Cram (Exam: 70-216)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I passed 216 today on the first try with this exam cram, the MS Press study guide, and the Resource Kit. The basics are all covered well. IPSEC was covered well, at least as well as you need to know for the exam. This is worth the money, although admittedly it could have been a little stronger in one or two areas (Certificate Server being one of those).

Before you buy it, though, make sure you understand one thing - All of the exam crams have one goal: to be used as your study guide AFTER you've spent about a month using other materials. They were never intended to be sole study guides. For instance, this one doesn't go into subnetting because you're SUPPOSED TO ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO IT! Instead, it tells you how to use the subnetted addresses...get the picture?

While this series of books was excellant for the A-plus and Net-plus exams, and an invaluable aid for the Cisco CCNA exam, they have completely missed the mark for the W2K MSCE. I can only assume from the positive reviews I see here that those reviews were for the NT 4.0 version of this book or that MS had changed the W2K exam structure since this book was published. The book gives an excellant high level understanding of the subject and is a great desk reference, but the MS exam requires detailed knowledge to the command-option-switch level, and that sort of detail is sadly missing. The practice and sample exams within also concentrate in straight "how-to" or "why-do" type questions and answers and do not at all prepare one for the "mini-scenerio" question format MS has migrated to on all their exams.
The only W2K MCSE prep books I have seen so far (and I have looked at several) that actully contain all of the technical detail necessary for doing well on the exam is the MS press W2k MCSE prep guide (its boring and hard to stay awake using it, but all the info that might come up on the exam is definately in there). Unfortunately, this Exam Cram book falls far short of having the info needed.

If you are completely new to networking, then this book may leave you with the feeling that it was too "skimpy". If however you have an understanding of networking you will probably love it. [....]

Overall, I think this is a great book. If you ARE new to networking, I suggest reading their tcp/ip book first. And if you are taking the exam you may want to read troytec (or whatever they call themselves now) in conjuction with this book. But I think this is a great nook!

The book is not worthy of the Exam Cram label. I have taken 7 certification tests. I always always read the exam cram for the test before I take it. Most of the time Exam Cram's are my primary study tool, and on a few test my only study tool (which is always a bad idea). This book however was the first of the 8 Exam Cram's i've read that didn't cover the points that the test hit. RRAS is a very important topic on this test, but the book doesn't cover it in the detail that the test warrants. I am overall disappointed in this title and will avoid this author in the future. As far as the Server and Professional Exam Cram's they are excellent very few typing errors and no technical errors that I picked up on. I do recommend those two for their corresponding exams.

The air speed of an unladen swallow is not a topic covered in depth in any of the Exam Cram books.... To my disappointment.

I was brought up on virtually ExamCram books for my certifications (Cisco, M$, CIW, COMPTIA, Linux, etc), and I usually have good things to say about the quality and the mapping of the material to the exam objectives.

This book, however, is the exception rather than the rule. The material covered in just abut 250 pages sans the Sample Test and the Glossary is nothing to shout about. Take away the first 2 chapters which are merely basic stuff found most probably in their other books on the OSI model/Internet and so on and what you have is very skimpy material that hardly covers 30% on what the exam touches on.

The 70-216 exam is probably the toughest exam of the Core, and the Sample questions are no where near the Case Studies. Take away the pages with the questions after each chapter and you will certainly feel that the material begins to look more like exam notes rather than exam meat.

Look elsewhere if you wish to attain the coveted MCSE badge of honor.

This book actually got me confused when I read it after taking the Microsoft Official Curriculum course. I thought I understood most everything at the end of the MOC course. Then while studying for the exam I read this Exam Cram and found myself in a worse position. Week areas of the book include IPSec, security, remote access and routing.

I found the book so unsatisfactory that I read and studied the Syngress/Osborne 216 book just get my bearings again. Wish I could return the Exam Cram book to Coriolis, but wouldn't you know it -- they just went out of business.

I am becoming a big fan of the Exam Cram series, but this book just barely cuts it. To its credit, it helped me struggle to pass the exam on my first try after reading this over a few days. I employed the same strategy for the Active Directory test and used the Directory Services Exam Cram and was a lot more successful. This book is far inferior to that. Even if you understand everything in this book, you will struggle with the MCSE 2000 Network Infrastructure Exam. Some things just aren't covered here that are on the test (including Network Monitor). Also, the little bit they have on Remote Access Policies is not nearly comprehensive enough. While reading the book (especially the certificate chapter and routing chapter), I felt that the authors did not understand the material well enough to describe it cogently. Also the book gets really deep sometimes into non-essential areas (like the IPsec chapter and the OSPF section -- the test doesn't expect you to know nearly as much about this as you'd think from the book). Not sure what I'd recommend in the place of this Exam Cram, but I would recommend other books in the Exam Cram series -- generally, they're a lot better than this.

I have used Cram Exam books in the past and this is by far the worst. While everything is clearly presented it lacks much of the information that you will need to pass the test. It seems that the author never read the Microsoft objects for this test clearly. I recommend that the author first takes the test and then try again.

Although this book was clearly written and presented in a logical order, it failed to adequately cover the material I was tested on. This subject area was not covered well by the Microsoft Training kit either. I passed on the first try but I used other resources as well.

I too like a few other who reviewed this book found it to be rather lacking. I read this book a total of 3 times, as well as the fact that I took classes using the official Microsoft curriculum and read the book for Module 2153 twice.
I used the Exam Cram series to pass 70-210 and 70-215, but this book never even mentioned things that I saw on my test that I took today.
This book is definitely not enough to pass this test.
Too much irrelavent information, there is no need for in depth info on the Diffie-Helman algorithms, when Network Monitor is never mentioned. Even Microsoft never mentions Diffie-Helman by name.
This test is a tough one, read and practice as much stuff as you can to prepare for it. Also, be prepared for questions about Web servers, something else never covered in this book.