Customer Reviews

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Unleashed (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the first book I've read that covers ALL of the mobile options that Microsoft touts as the biggest benefits for migrating to Exchange 2003.

The coverage of RPC over HTTP (Ch.25) is the ONLY place I've seen step-by-step implementation procedures that work! (even the instructions on Microsoft's Website are not complete, so this book FINALLY helped me get it working!)

The new Outlook Web Access (Ch.26) is covered in detail, so much so that I've actually earmarked the chapter and gave it to my boss on why our organization needs to migrate to Exchange 2003.

And I'm just dabbling with the mobile phone and PocketPC devices, and the book (Ch.22, 23, 24) makes a great recommendation of downloading free emulators that I was able to test the functionality without having to buy mobile devices just yet.

At a little over 1000-pages, this book has so far covered everything I've been looking for. I look forward to continuing my reading.

Trust me. I went through many Exchange server books and I am an experienced system admin and Exchange admin. This book is the worst book for technical people. The concept in the book is for readers who are most likely a non-technical managers who want to have an overall knowledge about Exchange. If you touch Exchange server, do not read this book and waste your time. Go with Exchange 24/7 which is much better.

This book, like all technical books, obviously took a number of people a large amount of time to complete. No disrespect to the authors but they missed a lot of basic things.

The book does have some decent info. But, once again, it appears the publisher decided to put out a book to take advantage of demand for a new product. They should have focused more on beefing up their content and they might have had something.

There is a lot of information that should be obvious to somebody with experience in the technology field. Do we really need migration planning meeting notes with generic categories like "Budgetary Issues, Planning Considerations, Technical Resources?" I don't think so.

Worse still, some of the contents of the book were illegible. Figure 2.4 of the Sample Project Schedule was totally blotched. Is this a shameless attempt to further thicken a book that is 70% filler?

Perhaps this was once again a failure in layout. They could have included all that migration stuff in a later chapter. Why did they include that before discussing more about the Exchange Server itself?

In fairness, there was some useful info in the book. But do I have to see another screen shot of somebody right-clicking in the management console?!?! Argh!!!

It's a shame that this book was such a missed opportunity. Publisher's like this need to pay for experience technical editors to correct these issues before publication. I don't blame them necessarily for trying to put out a book quickly and make a fast buck though.

For somebody who is a TOTAL beginner in technology and wants to learn about Exchange, this book probably holds some value for you. If you've just been assigned to plan an Exchange Migration and you haven't a clue, there is plenty of filler here to prolong some useless meetings. For anybody with any experience or knowledge of Exchange, this book is repetitive, slow, and not an effective use of your time.

Finally a comprehensive book on Exchange 2003! I've been waiting for months to read up on real world migration and maintenance experience with Exchange 2003. I found the "easy way" method of migration from Exchange v5.5 to Exchange 2003 (covered in Chapter 15) being the best documented recommendation from leading experts! My organization has been looking to do the migration in the way that the authors of the book describe as the "hard way" and I've been trying to convince my management there is a better way. This book clearly documents the step by step procedures, and I've been able to show my entire team that this easier method of migration not only accomplishes the migration task, but the authors provide ways to roll-back if there are problems, as well as very well documented arguements on the benefits of the easy way migration to Exchange 2003!

This is the best information I've read on migrating to Exchange 2003! Definitely goes beyond the basics and really shows the authors have worked and lived with migrations to Exchange 2003 many times in the past.

Excellent book!

I bought this book because others rated it so high. It was a great disapointment. Microsoft's 70-284 training kit had a more in-depth coverage of Exchange 2003, even though it is basically a copy&paste of technet articles, than Unleashed. I found Microsoft's course 2009 material to be the best source of information on Exchange 2003. It is definetely the most complete out of the three. I was surprised!

Well, my advice is if you want to go out and buy a book, don't get this one, get Microsoft's training kit. If you want to learn Exchange 2003, take course 2400 or 2009, they'll give you a better return on your time spent.

FC
MCSE 2003,2000,4.0 MCSA Linux+ CCNA

If you are about to tackle a Migration from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 or from Exchange 2000 to Exchange Server 2003, this book is the guide you have been looking for. The author will tell you what you need to know in order to plan your migration and design the new Windows/Exchange 2003 environment. The book lists all the tools out there that can help you make your life a lot easier and it will take you through the process in a step-by-step fashion. On top of all the author does a wonderful work in aticipating most posible questions from the reader. I migrated from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 two servers in the same Active Directory Forest but in two different locations. All in a single weekend. I give it 5 Stars and a standing ovation. This book is a must have tool for a smooth Migration to Exchange 2003.

This book was recommended to me by our Microsoft TAM as the best Exchange 2003 book on the market. He was right, this book has real world information on how to successfully architect Exchange 2003 and migrate existing mail to the new environment. We used this book as our bible through most of last year. I just bought 5 more copies of book to hand out to my team as we need the same real world recommendations to administer and manage our Exchange 2003 enterprise, as well as tune and optimize our servers. This book makes designing, implementing, and supporting Exchange 2003 simple, and if you follow the procedures in the book, it actually does make what we thought might be complicated processes a whole lot easier. I describe this book as the guide for "real" Exchange architects, implementers, and administrators who want to know a lot of information quickly and succinctly.

Exactly what I needed. Great book. This is not for your average user. I will keep buying this line of product.

This is an excellent book when it comes to planning an Exchange 2003 roll out, specially if you are new to exchange or coming from exchange 5.5. It has a chapter on virtually everything you need to know about how to get an exchange 2003 server up and running. In the day to day administration this book is not that good. It lacks detail when it comes to the under hood "stuff ", the how and why of the configuration examples in the book. It gives you enough to get the server up and running, but without knowing exactly how things work it is hard to troubleshoot. If you are looking for a book to study for certification this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you are someone like me that is new to 2003 and AD then this an excellent book to begin with. It is easy to read and well organized.
I would give it 4 stars if it had more on troubleshooting and more real world examples.

I bought this book recently in advance of our migration project that we performed. The author's do a very good job in explaining the nitty gritty of Exchange itself, and how to properly design an Exchange environment with all of the major items I was looking for. The migration section was great, and I also found some very good information on the best ways to setup and deploy clients with ActiveSync, RPC over HTTPS, Cached mode, etc.

I did find that this book is not really the type of book that you would use for day-to-day admin of Exchange, I like the books by Jim McBee for those types of tasks, but for architectual design and migration, this is hands down the best book I've found.