Customer Reviews

Novell's CNEŽ Study Guide -- IntranetWare/ NetWareŽ 4.11

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

 

 

Like many other reviewers here, I found all the irrelevant junk Mr Clarke filled his pages with to be distracting and irritating. The only reason I bought it was that I picked it up... at a discount book store. I still think I wasted my money. And I should have known better because his CNA Study Guide is just as bad.

The cover says it comes with THE Clarke Test (emphasis mine) and the text in the book describes the full version. But the software you get is actually nothing more than a demo. You have to read the fine print hidden around the edge of the CD to know this before purchasing.

I think this book is a waste of time and a rip-off. I would demand my money back from Mr. Clarke himself if I thought I could get it. Whatever you do, never buy any books by this man.

I owe Mr Clarke a debt of gratitude. It is thanks to his writing style that I am an MCSE and not a CNA or CNE. The book is thick, which is appropriate--anyone who could get through this thing must needs be pretty thick himself. The jokes and cartoons are annoying without being in the least bit diverting. NetWare itself is hardly the most exciting OS on the market, but this is ridiculous! Don't waste your money.

This manual is the perfect example of why technical authors need editors. It is a sloppy collection of superficial information and condescending, corny jokes. What is most disturbing is that Novell would authorize this as their definitive guide when other manuals are superior. David James Clarke IV liters his manual with incessant attempts at humor, irrelevant "brainteasers", and distracting Zen philosophy. It has been said that the best parts are the Chapter review questions. Unfortunately, this is also where many of the errors are. The style seems to be directed toward children with short attention spans. Potential CNEs are far more sophisticated and competent than he gives them credit for being. This profession is not for those who require cartoons and simplistic analogies. I'm not sure what's worse, the egotistical self-promotion or the moronic "Mr. Rogers" tone. I suppose if this book had been properly edited, we could have seen a decent 300 page manual.

All knowledge this book offers is well hidden behind all those jokes and "zen" things. It's a good book for people who want to train how to distinguish between useful and useless information.

Very low information/page ratio.

It's hard to believe that Novell Press sanctioned this rambling, disorganized piece of garbage as their official CNE Study Guide. I guess they want people to take their official, expensive CNE classes instead. As other readers have noted, this book is written in the "DOS for Dummies" style. An incredible amount of non-essential, distracting "humor," "cute" stories, and stupid cartoons are inserted between the precious few nuggets of real information. This approach may work for children, but it is offensive to thinking adults. Also, the book is totally disorganized with respect to the Novell CNE exams, and this makes it useless as a study guide. I have never gotten angry at an author of a book before, but I found myself actually getting angry at this author; for wasting my time and money, seeking to distract and confuse me, and for his condescending, "smarter than thou" attitude. The author injects way too much of his own personality (such as it is) into this book, which is supposed to be an official Novell CNE Study Guide. Reading between the lines, the author sounds like an aging, drug-addled Berkeley ex-hippy, who is obsessed with parenthood and children (his own). There are way too many quotes by Dr. Seuss and references to his daughter, sprinkled throughout this book. Apparently, the author fancies himself the all-knowing "father," while his readers are dumb "children" seeking his guidance. He obviously thinks he's a Novell genius, but his book is filled with errors. (I guess geniuses don't need proof-readers). This author also runs an online training company called CyberState University, which he shamelessly plugs throughout this book. I foolishly joined CyberState University, and quickly discovered that it was as disorganized, sloppy, and error-filled as this book. In fact, this book is used for all of their coursework! (I got most of my money back). If you are looking for a good Novell CNE Study Guide, be advised: it doesn't exist! I've tried other so-called CNE Study Guides, which were almost as bad as this one. Advice: Take the classes at a local NAEC. It's much more expensive, but it's the only way to really learn this stuff.

This book takes all the fun from learning. It inserts "dummies" type humor through out that is distracting. The book is very hard to follow and it constantly refers to other chapters in the book without a link. It also refers to web sites rather than a more detailed explanation.

If I didn't have to buy this book for a college class, I wouldn't have bought it at all.

Unfortunately, this book does not cover all of the required exams for current CNE status. It doesn't cover the most popular electives. The tests that it does cover are intermixed throughout all of the book's chapters, making it very difficult for someone studying for individual tests. Although a cross-reference is provided in the appendix, it is just too difficult to concentrate on any given track. The book is very light on actual descriptions of the concepts, and these descriptions are incomplete. A student must have access to a good lab because he or she will not get accurate or complete results by reading the text alone. Finally, the book is 2 or 3 times as thick as it needs to be (it's very bulky and hard to carry) because there are numerous jokes, quotations, "Zen" philosophies and math puzzles (not related at all to NetWare). Sometimes as much as half to two thirds of the printed pages! This book, by itself, is not particularly helpful in studying for the Novell Exams. There are much better books available from New Riders and Sybex, although other books from IDG are excellent.

There are two types of CNE students in this world: Those that love this book and those that loathe it. I was severely disappointed to find that, although the cover of the book tells you that the official Novell courses are inside, they're not in any specific order! I don't know about the rest of you, but I take one test at a time...and that's how I'd like to study for them. There's an index at the back that tells you which pages to read to follow Novell's cirriculum for a specific course, but it's 10 pages here, 5 pages there, 2 or 3 pages here, 30 pages there...on and on and the the material may span 1000 pages or more. I don't understand the thinking when putting this book together. I bought it at another store and returned it. My time is too valuable than to subject myself to this.

...than wade through this book again. The biggest problem with this book is its utter lack of focus. The book is about a distinct, highly technical subject and yet the author subjects the reader to constant barrages of pointless quotations, humorless jokes, entire pages of brainteasers and puzzles that are only marginally applicable to anything in the text, yet all of which manage to break up and confuse the text. You could shave a solid hundred pages off the book and still have a book that better prepares you for your CNE exams than this one does in its current form. All of this, and the included software bites!

The good things about this book is that it has all the material the four CNE courses in one book. However, it's difficult to use this book to prepare for the CNE test due to the way this book is organised. Rather, if one can read this book from the beginning until the end, he/she is definately going to be better in handling Intranet design and implementation is a effective way. The imperfect being no "Building Intranet With IntranetWare" section in this book making it imperfect as a complete guide for CNE course. Also, the CD that come with this book is defective and until now I still haven't got back my replacemenet