Customer Reviews

Windows XP: Command Line

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

 

 

If your need is a "classroom in a book" on basic command line operation - then this book may be for you as it is filled with examples and labs (although $... is a bit steep for the privilege). However, administrators in corporate environments will find the book too simplistic for their needs.

This book is easy to follow. It will help you get a feel for MS DOS, it is for the true beginner of DOS. It is not for the seasoned DOS expert, cause it is too simple. I was a true beginner at DOS, used this book for an independent "command line" class at college. Do not let the colorless text fool you.
While not "pretty" like other books, it has some good knowledge to be had. I had much success with it.

This book has one huge drawback - As you go thru the exercises, altering files, moving files to other directories, and so forth, each chapter depends on what you did in the previous one. If you mess up bad enough and do not have a backup of your work, you will get into a mess. You HAVE to go thru this book in sequence for things to work right. Take all instructions and warnings serious.
Be careful with what you learn tho, and heed the authors warnings, cause thru DOS, it is easy to wipe out tons of files on any drive with a few simple keystrokes. You will "know enough to get into trouble" with certain things.
NEVER experiment with DELETE commands (DEL) while on your hard drive if you are not sure what you are doing.

I took the class, was very impressed with the class, the book, and its contents.
Altough it is written for XP Pro, it was a great help in understanding, and using XP Home.
I keep it nearby to refresh points that arise, that I do not use often.
To me it was well worth the investment.

Im not sure if this is the best command line book.. but i love it. It full of many commands and has a full layout of what each does. Im not new at command prompt and not a god at it either.. so its great to have this as a reference when i need something to happen over my network. Im very satisfied with this book and id recommend it to anyone. The CD that comes with it is strange thow. It must be for practiceing, cause its full of useless knowlegde text files. i havent found a use for it yet, but maybe im over looking something.

After having read the review of Oscar Lagunas I hesitated a bit buying this book but finally I have bought it although and I'm very happy having done it. If you have like me never worked with MS-DOS and you want to learn the command line I find this is a perfect book specially if you have to do it by yourself.
If I have a criticism about the book it is that it explaines sometimes things (which I find quit evident) to mutch in details. But maybe even this is good because it is written at a very basic level for somebody who doesn't know anything about the computer.
With the book ships a floppy disk which is used to learn the first steps and the examples in the book are taken from it so everything on your screen is exactly like in the book.

The book is easy to follow and the hands-on exercies really help solidify the concepts in your head. HUGE book - how many pounds does this thing weigh? A must-read for those who've never used DOS but want to learn.

This book is quite dated, talking about floppy disks and FAT file systems, but it is written in an easy to understand way. The author uses good analogies to aid in learning. It contains many hands on activities which are well explained and reinforce learning.

Greetings to all interested in purchasing this product, or are just generally curious about it.

My review on this item is sincere and un-biased. I used this book approximately three (3) years ago for a class within the Computer Networking curriculum.

I still use this text both inside and outside of my job (Information Technology) for quick references and occasional refreshing; especially when Google isn't readily available, lol.

The content and information seems to be very accurate and useful. Not only does the text provide references of command line interface commands, switches, and arguments (just to name the basics), but the text also offers examples and scenarios of where and when such commands, switches, and arguments can be used. In addition, the text also covers scripting and creating, configuring and generating scripts. Every command line reference is focused on performing specific tasks within Windows XP, where some commands can work with earlier versions of Windows and even DOS. Most if not all of the command line commands in Windows XP can be used in Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 as well.

I highly recommend this book for both beginners and novices. Students can and will greatly benefit from the information content and IT professionals can always rely on the included information for quick and detailed references.

Ok from an IT and fundamental stand point this has to be the biggest book printed about the most unused subject in IT. First of all if you are learning XP command line your wasting your time. While it still is used by some people it's pointless. You would be better spent learning UNIX of Linux and then figuring out how to do it on Windows. See UNIX, LInux and many other main stream OSes use the same commands. Windows does not. They have made you unlearn everything you know about commands to do it their way and their way is of course the wrong way ergo this book is of course useless and even in some cases makes you do things the long way for no apparent reason. I needed this book for college and had to buy it. It's a huge waste of any geeks time.

It is, IMHO, absolute insanity that one would write a putative "textbook" where it takes until page 400 to teach one how to copy files from here to there. The "material" contained in this text could all be concisely communicated in a 20-page chapter on elementary file system navigation in DOS. Even the title "Windows XP ..." is misleading, as if this ancient material has any more connection to XP than to 3.1 for Workgroups. What other than inveterate greed could even have possessed this "author" to create such an obscene corpus of redundant, elementary material?