Customer Reviews

Robert Cowart's Windows Nt 4 Unleashed: Professional Reference Edition

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

 

 

Contains a some useful general information, but one expects a lot of specific detail from a nearly 1000-page "Professional Reference". Disappointingly, every time I've tried to use the book as an actual reference -- i.e., looked for specific detail on the operation or configuration of some feature -- I've found something of the following form: (1) A paragraph gushing about how wonderful Windows NT is; (2) A paragraph giving me no more information than I could have gotten from the Windows help files. The only reason the book gets more than one star is that I sometimes get some useful general information. The book definitely does not live up to its billing as a "Professional Reference".

Although this book is considered an "essential" NT reference, and we would buy it again, hardware references are very outdated for a book copyright 1997. Chapter 10 is hopelessly outdated and seems like a cut & paste job from other books. Who cares about VLB mother boards or 80486 CPUs "The first big decision is whether to go with a Pentium or a 80486 class of chip". This chapter goes on in length about old technology or basic PC design which I believe does not belong in this book. It is just filler. Many sections seem lifted from other of the author's books with an attempt to edit it for this book. Editing was poor as there are many paragraphs that were rewritten but the old ones never deleted so they follow one another. In some cases paragraphs that have nothing to do with a topic appear out of no where.(Example p 359 paragraph 5 is misplaced - it has nothing to do with the section!) The book is also for server & workstation and much of th! e book is workstation oriented, not server oriented. In addition differences that a newbee would need to know are not always noted. Ok, so it sounds like I just trashed the book. Well, it is not perfect, but it worth reading especially for newbees. The writing is clear and easy to read and puts the basics of NT out front. I still consider it a buy.I would not want to have this book out of reach.