William Stanek is the leading authority on the Microsoft Windows operating system, especially when it comes to administration. Whenever I need a Windows book on a topic I check to see if he''s written a book on the subject. I've been reading his books for more than 5 years. His books have never steered me wrong. In "Windows XP Professional Administrator's Pocket Consultant" he documents Windows XP Professional essentials for experienced Windows users and administrators.

Unlike a lot of other books this isn't a "throw everything in" book. It is focused precisely on what matters and because Stanek an administrator he knows what really matters. The book does everything it promises. It is the only day to day book I use. Altough not designed to be a study guide for certification it is helpful for that too.

I would rate this as the definitive text on Windows XP Professional. It's got what you need. Pair this with Stanek's Windows 2000 Administrators Pocket Consultant and you''ve got everything you need to manage a Windows network. It is well worth the money and a great resource. TK

As an NT4/2000 admin, this has been all I needed to get myself up to speed with XP. This book focuses on key aspects of day to day XP use and administration--you won't find coverage of hardware requirements and installation procedures, nor will you find exhaustive white papers masquerading as psuedo-documentation. I used to hate MS Press offerings, but the pocket consultant series has allowed me leave the 'bibles' and resource kits at home. I keep the OS and Exhange consultants on my desk and have actually started re-reading some of them for pleaure just to keep from forgetting some of the stuff I don't utilize daily on the job. I've even gotten some of my early adopting power users to buy and use this book.

If you're studying for certs or need in depth info for design research/general reference, buy a bible book, resource kit, or cert guide for the minutia and specific testing guidelines. But buy this book too because it's small and lightweight and is like set of XP Cliff notes.

Being new to Windows XP Professional I need to find books that will allow me to be able to get answers quickly and I don't want to spend a great deal of time looking for them. The pocket consultant is a blessing for me and for those just starting out with XP this may be a book you'll want to keep right by your side.

Being only 300 pages, don't be fooled into thinking this book can't possibly coverage every aspect of XP professional, it's not design for that. The content of the book is to give you coverage of the topics and areas within XP and answers questions from the foundation level.

Covering areas like administration, networking, setup and configuration, troubleshooting, monitoring devices, desktop support, toolbar configuration, laptop users, remote access connections, policies, the internet and VPNs, you'll have a very well rounded reference manual to work with.

Not written to be a Exam Prep type of book it does make a good source of information for the XP Professional exam, but you will need other material to fill in the details. Overall the book is easy to follow and does answer most of the basic to some intermediate questions. The only change I would make is making this book portable to the palm device.

This thick book has ended up to be fairly worthless for me. There are other books, even those half the size, that I use more often. Scripting in Windows really isn't that complicated, and most of what I need to know can be found on the web in minutes. A waste.

I purchased this book just to add to my scripting knowledge. What I found is that the information provided is really at a very basic level, with poor examples, and a lot of omissions.
Although the author hit all of the major topics, the examples given, and explanantion of what was being done in the examples would have left me without a solid understanding of how to use them in the real world if I did not already know 90% of it. In addition, entire chapters on how to work with specific items skip the most obvious and simple methods of scripting how to work with those items.
On a positive note, the index is accurate and makes it easy to look up a specific sytax when needed.
In summary, it is decent as reference material, but don't rely on this book to teach scripting. You will be left with a lot of questions, overly complex methods of accomplishing goals, and no idea that many of these things can be scripted in ways never even mentioned.

This is a good book, but there are errors in places that matter. I'm absolutely new to Windows programming, and when there are typos on the sample scripts, I have to do trial and error to make the script work. While the trial and error makes one more experienced with the quirks of windows scripting, it delays progress. It makes the person digress and have to reread the main point of the material being studied.

Also, since this book purports to be a beginners' book, it should define more clearly what an "object oriented" programming language is, what objects are, and so on. In chapter 1, there was a short description of what these things were, but I didn't understand them due to acute brevity. I had given up on the book until I caught a glimpse in real life of how visual basic programs were created and how they are used. With insights gained from real life application, I was able to go back to this book and fill in the gaps.

Programming is very delicate. A mistake of one space in the wrong place could mean serious headaches to the experienced. But the same mistake in the teaching material of an absolute newbie is just a painful distraction from study. In future versions, please make sure typography is 100% perfect, or at least the sample scripts are 100% perfect.

Unfortuantely the author has spent a lot of 'page real-estate' evangelizing the open-source movement, instead of providing more info on the innards of mozilla.

It's still a good intro if you are planning to dwelve into mozilla's source code, but it's definately lightweight.

This book couldn't possibly cover the entire Mozilla code, but I think it's excellent at getting you oriented with the structure of the Mozilla code, Mozilla.org and how to use it, basic developer stuff like CVS, and how to build Mozilla on your system, be it Unix, Linux, Windows, or Mac. I rate this one a definite buy.

Getting started on the Mozilla project is nearly impossible. This book took several months off my ramp up time and I owe a huge thank you to the author Mr. Stanek. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to work with the Mozilla source. Excellent from start to finish.

I also recommend to readers who want to learn key lessons from this massive development project. Again, a good choice.

The publishers of computer books ought to realize that people buy the books to be able to learn a program without having to suffer through technical gobbledygook. This book is written very badly. It is poorly organized. The book's five authors, I get the impression, weren't speaking to one another when they wrote it. The same material is covered in some chapters.

I found it extremely difficult to get anything out of this book, because the material is expalined so badly. I do not recommend it.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm a competent user of Linux, Windows, and the computer in general. I bought this book expecting it to teach me how to take the *basic* knowledge of FrontPage that I had gleaned from playing with the buttons and learning what they do by trial-and-error and expand upon it, not just explain how to use wizards. Guess which one I got. The so-called "Guide to Running a Linux Server" consisted of an explanation of the fact that ports of the giant security holes that Microsoft calls Server Extentions exist for almost all platforms. I was shocked! The first few chapters in the "Core FrontPage Techniques" section involved inserting tables and pictures! What?! There was then a useful chapter on positioning with CSS2, but then the book jumped right back into using themes! Themes! The topics that followed were primarily discussions of using the wizards, which is simply absurd. Microsoft's wizards make everything simple enough for even the most benightedly unintelligent person to understand. Nearly every topic that followed involved either a wizard or a Server Extension, and I'd rather not use anything like that. I am selling this book now, purchasing one on Dreamweaver, and moving on to real Web development.

what I learned in this book. I don't know where the other reviewers of this book are coming from but as a professional designer there was no better book on the market for me. The entire team I work with has a copy of this book. I have two of the previous editions as well. They are all great.

In my opinion, this is the best book out there whether you are starting off with this program or have used the program before. This book, like the other Stanek texts, is filled with great information, page after page, so that no matter what you are looking for on FrontPage you can find answers. If you are already a high tech person or already have used the program with some success, this is definitely a good choice. If you are a beginner that learns fast, I think this is a good choice too. This book is a must have for any FrontPage user.

I really like the approach and the presentation. The teaching style is casual and if you follow the chapters you will get a FP site up and running quickly. My advice is to buy this book.

I purchased this e-book based upon all of the ravingly, positive customer reviews. I had found George R. R. Martin's books via the same method, so I had high hopes for Stanek.

To my great dismay, I found the book to be very simplistic and unoriginal. In fact, to label it a "book" is a misnomer, it is more a short story - it took me only 25 minutes to read the whole first '"book." I might have shaved off another 5 minutes or so, but it became so boring that I had to fight off falling asleep over the last 50 pages.

It might serve as passable, introductory fantasy for a 9 year old who hasn't yet delved into the Harry Potter series. The plot was simple, the character development was amateurish - a hint to the depth of the book can be found right away in the names of two key characters: Queen Elf and King Gnome. Conjure up an image of a children's fantasy book with these two characters and you are most of the way there.

It would be a good, simple story for a parent to read to an 8 to 9 year old as a night time fantasy tale. I would give it 4 stars in this application.

Make no mistake, this isn't a complete book. Like another reviewer said this is an ebook that's part 1 of 4. Still, this is the book that got me started reading Robert Stanek.

This little book is a solid introduction to the bigger (better) book. If you like digital this is a good starting place, but you should really get ebooks 1 to 4 or you're missing out. You don't learn enough in ebook 1 to make a solid decision about the series.

I really enjoyed Robert's Keeper Martin's Tale and Elf Queen's Quest. Elf Queen's Quest is the print title for Return for Exile Chronicle I.

Classic fantasy and it's pretty darn good! The Journey Begins is ebook 1 of 4. The ebooks were obviously meant to be read together as you can get the whole book as Return from Exile: Chronicle I.

I have the book here and the authors name is listed on your site incorrectly. There is not a second e in the name. The first e with an accent is correct.

This book only covers what a novice programmer already know. It doesn't really cover the more difficult topics tested in the exam. I'd highly recommend that you consider the "Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide" which explains the difficult topics in a clear, concise and detailed manner.

I thought the book was well done. It was very helpful and very easy to read and understand the material. It took me less than 2 weeks to read the chapters and finish all the practice questions for the Java 2 Programmer Certification. It does cover all the topics in the exam. I passed the certification exam on my first try and I don't have real world development experience yet. Just reading the book isn't enough though because the exam has very tricky questions. This was the only Certification book for Java that I bought to study with and I believe I made the right choice. This book was a great review for me and help me strengthen the areas I was weak in. There are a few typos in the book but they are pretty easy to figure out.

The CD needs help. Many errors. After taking the practice exams twice you already memorize the answers so it is no longer helpful. I suggest using other sources for practicetests but be careful because practice test questions if you don't verify if their answers are correct and why they are correct, could make you make mistakes on the real exam or jumble up the java knowledge you already have.

Mr. Stanek has created a very good Java certification guide that is well-organized and very detailed. As a Java programmer with 3 yars experience, I found that the book was very good at helping me remember things I may have forgotten and also sufficiently detailed that someone with less experience would have an easy time using the book to get certification.

My favorite part of the book are the extensive Q&A/exam reviews. The book must have over 1,000 practice questions and exercises. This is much more than I've found in any other book and this is wonderful! Because I've been programming for a while, I went straight to the practice exams (the book has 5!; 3 programmer; 2 developer). I took the first practice test and failed miserably. I am now going through the text chapter by chapter and looking forward to taking the next practice exam.

If you are looking for a Java certification book or even a book to learn more about Java programming, I think this is the one. I recommend.

If you would like to know what the poorest exam guide could be, this one is an excellent sample. You could found all errors in your imagination and even more errors out of you imagination.
An definite guide for Java Exam candidate who would like to failed.

The true test of the Java 2 Certification Exam Guide is to actually take the Java 2 Certification exam and see if you pass.

But that's something I'm not going to risk after reading this book.

While there's thoughtful treatment of many Java issues, from the mundane to the esoteric, the presentation of these issues suffers from errors in both substance and typography.

Consider chapter 2, Java Programming Essentials. As you read through the chapter, you manage to ignore the various typos, after all, you already know Java, you're just trying to study for the exam. (It's just annoying to have to put up with them.)

You work through the exercises, and get philosophical as the authors ask you a question about a method that isn't even defined in the code sample they present. Are you supposed to use your imagination? I don't think that'd be a good idea on the actual exam.

Finally, you get to the end of the chapter to check your answers. Chapter 2 has exercises numbered 1 through 17. But the answers are numbered 1 through 19 ... and the answer for 17 doesn't have anything to do with the question for 17! You toss the book down in disgust.

That's unfortunately representative of much of the rest of the book. It seems pretty clear that the authors, the editors, and the publisher were rushing to get this text out. More's the pity, the book had real potential, with a lot of breadth. Maybe these problems will go away in a second or third edition ... but maybe Java 3 will be out then, too!

I wish they had provided a crystal ball instead of a CD with the book. That way we could have visualized the unknown exercises # 2.17 and 2.19 in Chapter 2 of this text, for which there are only answers but no questions. On second thought, I feel Barry Boone, is inventing a new style of presenting exercises. Remember in college books we had a lot of unsolved problems for practice. Well, Barry Boone is reversing that age old trend with his new guide. Now he will give us the answers and we have to create the questions that will fit his answers. What a fun, new way to study for Java Certification!

Obviously I felt very happy to have spent my money on this book. To express my gratitude, I sent a detailed letter to the authors and the publisher, neatly indexing and explaining all errors and typos in their text for Chapters 1 to 10. They made me even happier by not having the courtesy to acknowledge my letter with a little 'thank you', for doing their proof reading for FREE!. Leave alone publishing an addendum for the errors.

I suppose, Barry Boone is probably too busy in hurriedly cooking up another book to make money in the growing certification guide market. And hey, if readers like me are going to do the proof reading for free, why hire proof readers?

I bought this reference because I liked Stanek's book "Windows XP Professional Administrator's Pocket Consultant." I was disappointed. It is 275 pages, but the information could be printed in half that if weren't all double-spaced and in large type. It is also cheaply printed--the titles seem to use a drop shadow effect that might have looked good on-screen, but looks more like a bug when printed.

Only basic command-prompt stuff is presented. I don't see anything about file name completion, for example, and newer tools like fc (File Compare) are not included.

There are six pages on scheduling tasks with the "at" command, but it never mentions the newer XP command, schtasks, which is better integrated with the GUI version.

Finally, there is no index in the book. There is a chapter that has commands sorted by function rather than name, but it isn't a substitute for a real index.