Customer Reviews

Windows Nt Scripting Administrator's Guide

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

 

 

My previous review expressed reservations about this book because of the errors in a couple of chapters. I emailed Willaim Stanek about these and he quickly updated me with a full page of all the typos which were generated during production/copy editing. Having made all these changes to my copy I revist my review and add an extra level.

This book is an excellent resource for any NT administrator who seeks to utilize windows scripts to maximize their productivity. The first six chapters covers windows scripting and the last five chapters provide a good overview of Visual Basic and Java Scripting. I, too, have found the errors mentioned in a previous review but the errors are obviously typos and don't detract from the value of the book. I sent the author an email and he responded promptly with a URL for online errata that covers all the errors that I have found. Before I found this book, I was using an odd assortment of Dos 6.0 scripting references that were clearly out of date and I didn't utilize Visual Basic scripting at all. Now I am producing much better scripts and am quite pleased with the return I have received on my time spent reading the book.

I have covered about a third of this book and so this review is not exhaustive. Having found Tim Hill's book at times too challenging or lacking basic explanation on some topics, I have found this book to be a good substitute. However its flawed with errors i.e. on redicting input and output - on appends etc. So if you are going to use this book, better have a substitute for cross checking some of the syntax and commands or manually try each command and example provided in the book and hopeful figure out the mistakes, if any...

So far, I have therefore found Stanek's book very useful and also erroneous in some instances.

This book may be OK for those new to administering Windows NT or network guys who have no programming experience. But if you have any experience with Visual Basic, ASP, VB Script, or even if with old MS-DOS, I think you'll find the book to be of little value.

You got to get this book! No excuses. This is the best scripting book I've found. The approch is thorough and the book well thought out. I use this book everyday when I script. HIGHEST recommendation and you won't be disappointed.