Customer Reviews

Windows PowerShell Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))

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

 

 

I would knock a half a star off for some weakness in the index. That's a particularly big deal in a reference book. But it's not bad.

Overall this is a must-have. Holmes clearly knows his subject and presents it well. (He is a member of the PowerShell Development Team.) I may actually read this "reference" book. The quality is far and away superior to the other O'Reilly Pocket Reference books I've purchased. They gather dust on my shelf.

The content is substantial. Weighing in at 174 pages it dwarfs many O'Reilly Pocket References, yet is still highly portable.

Everyone knows that PowerShell users will want to read Windows PowerShell in Action for deeper understanding. I also like Windows PowerShell Cookbook: for Windows, Exchange 2007, and MOM V3 (also by Holmes) for examples that frequently help me get things working. Whatever else you get, you should have Windows PowerShell Pocket Reference.

[Published on http://msmvps.com/blogs/luisabreu/archive/2008/07/28/book-review-power-shell-pocket-reference.aspx]

I'm really happy to have received a copy of this book. It's really a simple, easy to read, concise book which contains all you need to get started with PowerShell. You can easy read the book in 1 or 2 days (that is, if you're reading from cover to cover). If you're near a computer, then you can always try to run the examples and even try some new things on your own (being a concise book, you'll find lots of references which you need to explore).

As you might expect, this is not a complete guide to Powershell. You won't also be getting info on how to build custom cmdlets or on how to extend Powershell.

Overall, I'd say this is a good reference book that you should have by your side if you're starting working with Powershell. I'm giving it 7/10.

At work I leave nothing on my desk. I keep it all in my messenger bag. The messenger bag has a premium on space. I keep maybe 4 books total. I'd bought this same book only c# and was really impressed with it's power to weight ratio. So now days I'm doing more powershell work and picked up the powershell version. If it doesn't have what I need I look it up on the internet. A 300 page book has way too much information and most of that I'd just look it up on the internet. This book is condensed to the point where it has only what I need.