Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Administrator's Companion Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Like the last guy said, this book is fairly basic. I haven't read the Beta docs, so I can't say if this is just a rehash of the initial white papers. But really...I can't remember a single MS book that's ever been 50-layers below the surface like many experienced Admins want. There's no way you could cover **everything** about SMS/SCCM in one volume.
Provided he/she has a good working knowledge of (a) AD (b) PKI and (c) SMS2003, I'd bet a mid-level Admin could deploy SCCM based on what he/she gets from this book.
Right now, we are in the middle of migrating a (very large) SMS infrastructure over to SCCM. I've found this book to be an invaluable resource. But lets face it - a good SMS/SCCM admin knows where to go if he/she is facing a weighty problem. The depth and breadth of SMS is just that....deep and broad. I honestly can't think of another MS application aside from AD that can do more.
Want to know MS best-practice for designing your upcoming SCCM-infrastructure, plan an SMS-SCCM migration, how to leverage DCM or Software Metering, etc...? Well, here's your book.
Want to figure out how to troubleshoot SMS/SCCM-related WMI issues, troubleshoot your Management Point, trick out your MOF to start collecting DIMM bank info, figure out why you are getting all those SQL errors after making said MOF change? Well, that's where the internet comes in. MYITforum or the Blogcast Repository in particular. Like I said, SMS/SCCM is a very deep and broad application. No one book is going to tell you how to do **everything**.
Steve and team did a good job here painting the 30,000FT view and giving perspective on all the new features. Like I said, its been an invaluable resource.

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The IC Bus: From Theory to Practice Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Regretfully, I have to say that "The I2C Bus from Theory to Practice" book is a bit of a disappointment for me. I've been reading these past 2 months the Philip's I2C related documents in PDF format, which I downloaded from the Internet. It seemed to me at the time that apart from the description of the protocol, there are some notes and maybe "hidden" facts, which are not described in the formal description of the protocol and so, I started to look for a book on the subject. Luckily I found one book (the only book) and hoped that it would elaborate on the I2C subject. I discovered that indeed this book justified its title and gave the required theory description, and practical examples as promised. But the theory is mostly copied/pasted out of the Philip's I2C bus protocol description with some additional notes added to it, and the overall description is nicely divided into chapters and chapter-parts which is maybe more readable for the 1'st time reader. As for the I2C practice, or practical information, again I was disappointed to find that some parts of the Philip's PDF's were inserted again ( as the PCF8584) which is almost fully described in the book. I think it would have been more appropriate to point out pointers for these PDF's (although it was mentioned once in the book that some material is taken from these documents) on the Philip's Internet site. I think the authors meant to give some practical examples by that, but I felt that it was just for filling out some more pages on the book (like an LP record's last 3 or 4 song tracks.) The appendix of the book was very disappointing and I didn't understand why I need these "printed circuits" low quality prints at the end of the book (pages 287-294) or maybe it was just to fill some blanks. The SW examples given out with the floppy disk were not so well documented and also some of it was in French anyways. All in all, this book was not what I thought it would be and that is a shame because it is the only book, which I found on the I2C subject on the Web. Maybe the authors wrote most of the documents in the Philip's PDF's and wanted to publish it in hard copy... (see title of this letter.) But, if you did purchase this book, you can always put it on the bookshelf because it has a nice respectable hard cover.

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