Customer Reviews

Microsoft Small Business Specialist Primer & 70-282 Exam Preparation Guide (featuring Windows Small Business Server 2003) (Harry Brelsford's SMB)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

FIRST EDITION (would give it 1 star):
I ordered this book in July 2005 and was greatly disappointed in the quality of the writing. As other reviewers have said, there are numerous typos throughout, including wrong answers on practices questions. However ...

SECOND EDITION (this is the 4 star rating):
I attended the SMB Nation conference in September 2005 (one of the authors created this conference) and they gave all of us present a free copy of the 2nd edition that had just come out. I noticed that Amazon is showing August 2005 as the published date, although I did not see a reference to a 2nd edition. Honestly, the publisher probably doesn't want to acknowledge the first one even existed. Even so, when I purchased my copy from Amazon originally, the published date listed on the site was early 2005 and I would think they are now selling the 2nd edition.

Nonetheless, the book is definitely helpful in passing the 70-282 exam. There is a lot of corny humor but they really do emphasize the things you need to know in order to pass the exam. Be sure to jump to the back of the book quickly and find the information about registering your book! When you do so, they will send you a PDF of additional practice questions. Take my word for it, you want to have this.

I have a lot of real world experience with Windows Server 2003 and not so much with SBS 2003. The book helped me fill in the gaps. But fair warning to all - the test covers Windows Server 2003 as well. You have to be able to differentiate when SBS 2003 is the better solution for a customer or when Windows Server 2003 is a better solution.

Overall, I would recommend the book for anyone wanting to pass the 70-282 exam but I also highly recommend getting some hands-on experience.

One of my main preparation tools for the exam was Harry and Beatrice's book, Small Business Specialist Primer & 70-282 Exam Preparation Guide. I commend them both on a well organized and thought out publication. There were some key themes that they stressed that were invaluable in my preparation.

First and foremost was to think the MICROSOFT WAY! Having worked with SBS for a number of years, it would be really easy to fall into the way I actually install and configure SBS as a guide to answering the questions. To do so would mean failure. The test taker must think like Microsoft to be successful. Thanks for hammering that point home throughout the book.

Secondly, I currently hold a MCSE certification and I found it tempting to possibly overlook this exam. That would have been a terrible mistake. MCSE's and MCP's need to remember that most of those exams are geared toward the enterprise solution segment, e.g., sites in different countries, parent-child domain relationships, multiple forests, thousands of users, etc. In the SBS world, these types of configuration are not needed nor are they available. One should remain focused on the words "Small Business".

Bottom line, if you want to pass the 70-282 exam, you definitely need this wonderful learning tool.

This book is simply cash flow. The information it contains is best described as brochure quips. If there were any depth at all it is in the likeness of exercise questions to typical Microsoft exam questions. Who is to say if they are relevant because no one in their right mind would take an exam based on reading this book alone. If you can get a free copy, its worth it. Otherwise the cost of shipping makes this an expensive bookend for your library of real books.

Here is an example from Chapter 4, page 4. The reader is informed that 'anything and everything' one needs to know about Exchange will be given in chapter 6. Chapter 6 is on security; its title does not match the reference made to it in chapter 4 and the index has no mention of Exchange in chapter 6 at all. Aside from a few paragraphs scattered throughout the book, Exchange has only fleeting references made to it. As I said that is one example. There are so many holes that the designation as an exam preparation guide is misleading. I suppose if all you want to know is what you need to study, then perhaps this is a useful guide, albeit a long winded effort to delineate a study guide. The 'friendly', 'I am your pal', 'jaunt along the bikepath' tone and anecdotes serve only to catalog this work as a simple draft whose aim is to fleece its audience of a few too many 'certification' dollars.

I don't trust this material as adequate exam preparation and have found it of little use even as a reference in the process of working with SBS03; I can't recommend it either.

I have the second printing, and will be donating this to my public libray soon. I really wanted this to be a good book, however it really is quite weak and doesn't warrant more than one star. Its positive, encouraging tone are well balanced by the discouraging effect the test simulation questions will have on you. Too many test questions are poorly written, hard to understand, and almost impossible to guess the correct answer. Questions often tested topics not covered whatsoever in the lessons; the explanations were too often bewildering. When you register this book, you get some pdf supplements that basically contains an apology for publishing such a terrible book. This may be a marginal supplement for your studies, but I'd recommend searching the Microsoft Learning site for "70-282" Sterling Jones webcasts, and their Partner site for "Small Business Server 2003". Spend more time on these resources. Give yourself more than a few hours nightly, and at least 2 weeks to study. Actually work with the product (Harry's other books are actually good for this), and schedule your exam. Good luck! I passed the exam by the way.

First off, the book is probably better than nothing. That's why I gave it 2 stars. Also, the book is very positive, in a cutesy, sort of Tony Robbins'esque (You can do it!!!!), with lots of Texan abbreviated slang (Y'all can do it!!!!).

I like my IT tutorial books to be friendly professional. This book was too friendly at times, with too many of those crazy Texan style uplifting quips. Felt like filler all too often. Another filler component was the huge number of references to their other book! I have never seen so many references to another IT cert text before.

If you know SBS somewhat, I suggest you just skim this book to make sure you know the nuances like minimum requirements, and all those other things you don't get to know by working with the product.

The questions were similar to what you would find in the exam. Lots of scenario questions seen in other tests.

Anyways, sorry for the negative review, I only mean for it to be slightly negative. It is truly better than no text at all for prep on this test.

I was very disappointed with this book. Unfortunately, at the time, it was the only book out there that claimed to be geard toward the SBS exam.

Specific issues I came across were:

* They are very loose with terminology to the point of being vague, or ambiguous.
* They give detailed information (like telling us what the text mode of server installation does as opposed to GUI mode) but fail to mention if this knowledge is necessary for the exam.
* Many of the "sample" questions have no basis in what was covered in the previous chapters.
* The sample questions aren't even samples, as they were (by their own admission) written by someone who didn't take the exam and then edited by someone who did take it so as to remove any questions that were too much like the real thing!
* The phrase "We can't emphasize enough the importance of exact terminology" appears two pages after they give the definition of "MMC" as "Multimedia Command Set"! (It's "Microsoft Management Console".)
* In chapter 10 we are told that "top students. . . Selectively pick which topics are important and which are not [and] Have an innate sense to anticipate what content will be tested and what content will be ignored". Funny. I thought that's the kind of information I expected to find in this book.

The book was useful to me to get quickly familiar with SBS 2003, but it was certainly not the determining factor in my passing the exam. Microsoft's own online, free training was more informative.

The technical training value of this book is "light" to put it mildly. Coupled with many "eaten" words, misspelled words and down right grammar mistakes, make this book a MUST AVOID. I wasted $39.00, but if someone out there reads this and buys a different book, let that be my consolation.
Most of the questions at the end of each chapter do not follow on the subject discussed previously. Some even have answers to non-existent questions (like the right answer on question 2 is E, but there were only 4 choices!?!).
They advertise an extra chapter and extra test questions if you fill up a registration form and fax it to them...Nonsense! I did but did not receive what they promised and my e-mail inquiries remained unanswered.

But the main reason I would recommend to buy somewhere else is because of the very low technical knowledge one would gain from putting up with all the above.

After having finished inserting the requisite errata from the enclosed paper (HARRY- hire a f*&^#$g editor to read this *before it goes to press) and reading the first few chapters, I took the practice test at the end of chapter 3. Good lord. I have never seen such a morass of nonsensical mumbojumbo. two stars for being first to market.

Here is a question (i'm not kidding):
you are called to provide advice to a prospective customer about what solution he should install in his business. since you are a long way from this prospect, you ask him to send you an e-mail with some basic information you can use to put together an interview to define the solution. which of the following pieces of information gives you enough information to begin formulating a recommendation?
a) one dedicated fax line that is not currently in use
b) an internet connection
c) three computer workstations
d) pentium 4 - 2.4GHz server with 40 GB hard drive
e) 70 employees

authors' answer is A, the only piece of information complete enough to provide guidance.

Do the authors/editors of the SOLE book on 70-282 really expect microsoft to ask this kind of idiotic question? i'm no stranger to MS tests and i have never seen this type of vague unanswerable question on any of the dozen-plus tests i've passed on the first try.

Since i have to pass this test, i will continue to "use" this book, but it sucks.

I just got back from taking the 70-282 test. I passed, but no thanks to this book. I realize the questions are randomly chosen, but I can not imagine it is pure luck that the vast majority of the questions asked were not covered in this book. The test is 41 questions and I would say about five matched up with what I read in this book. The rest, I had to rely on my experince as a network admin to get through. Even if you memorize every word in this book, you will still fail without much more in-depth knowledge of networking in general, Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003. It is really disapointing that a so-called "study guide" turns out to be so irrelevant to the actual test.

Bottom line, do not rely solely on this book.

First time I have written a book review and I'm doing so because I should have read other reviews before buying this book.

This is one of the worst technical books I have ever purchased/read.

I bought this book to prepare for my exam not to learn about the smb nation and the business endeavors of the author.

The most frustrating part is that at the end of each chapter there is a quiz section which is representative of the questions you would face on the exam. You are supposed to know these answers by osmosis as topics in most of the questions are never even covered in the chapter. It would be helpful if the chapters covered the material that we would be tested on.

Sickening (and watch out for the 5 star reviews as these are generally shims)