This text impressed me as the worst technical text I've ever read (I went through 4 years of texts for an BSEE). It's as if the authors were given 3 days to write it, the structure and planning of the presentation is so awful.

Horrible experience ! I never received the product that I paid for. What else is there to say ?

The test has questions related to DNS, Subnetting, etc... If you don't know this stuff, then you will most likely fail.

I used thisbook as the only source to take the 70-291 Exam.

I had read reviews on the exam and people were taking up to the third go to pass it... Needless to say I was nervous taking the exam.

I read this book from cover to cover twice for the two days prior to the exam.
Completed the labs and took not of all the tips in the book.
Combined with a few years of on the job experience I passed first go. I found that the text covered all the information required for the exam (and there is a lot to be covered in this one!)
The chapters on DNS I found very well written and also the RRAS chapters in particular.

I would recommend this to anyone wanting to preapre for 291.

I only used this book for passing the exam and it is worth it, it covers many topics in "no deep " detail but if you have been in the field for a while you know what the important stuff is. It is good but not the best, I think they over load aa bunch of useful but useless info at the same time, beyond the exam tipics, like scripting.

Probably you have heard this is the hardest windows server 2003 exam, then i will say that it is. The good news are really study this book and of course really do practice this material on a virtual machine or a test enviroment. Why may this book will not be enough to pass the exam, it is because you will get simulations (you'll have to configure dns, dhcp, etc) and that's why you will need lot of practice. But the book will help you along the way.

This was a great book for the 70-291 exam. Most people refer to this one as the hardest in the MCSE 2003 track so I spent some extra time pouring over this particular book. The information was comprehensive and I'd say it was one of the best in the series in terms of learning that just keeps on giving. I'm studying for the Server 2008 upgrade now and it's nice to see that a lot of the concepts covered in this book are still valid. Passed this exam using the book and a little experience with a healthy margin.

Before I started on my MCSA path, I had basically zero hands on experience with server. I picked up this book along with the book for the 70-290 test and these are ALL I used to pass both the tests.

Just read and make sure you UNDERSTAND what you are reading and do all the exercises and practice quizzes/tests. You really need 2 computers to do all the exercises.

The book was in excellent condition. And the shipping was lightning fast!! It was a gift for my daughter

This book is well written with a lot of hands-on. I had no prior Exchange knowledge but got right down to business and was able to easily relate my MCSE skills set into use.

Full of major errors, check the following link for the corrections to this book if you are unlucky enough to have purchased it. I hope the authors and the people who gave it the microsoft stamp of approval before being published have been fired! I am an MCSE in 2000 and 2003 with over 9 years of experience and have found this to be the lowest quality study material from Microsoft yet. [...]

Full of major errors, check the following link for the corrections to this book if you are unlucky enough to have purchased it. I hope the authors and the people who gave it the microsoft stamp of approval before being published have been fired! I am an MCSE in 2000 and 2003 with over 9 years of experience and have found this to be the lowest quality study material from Microsoft yet. [...]

Not all Microsoft Press books are equal. This one is difficult to read, overly complicated and poorly organized. I stopped studying with this book and switched to a CDROM-based video training program, which proved much better.

Not all Microsoft Press books are equal. This one is difficult to read, overly complicated and poorly organized. I stopped studying with this book and switched to a CDROM-based video training program, which proved much better.

The only reason to buy this book is to get a evaluation copy of Exchange Server 2003 software. I had Chapter 14 lessons 4 & 5 missing from the book.

I wouldn't waste your money. I am only on chapter 2 and the mistakes in here are stacking up. Spelling mistakes, incorrect information and questions that say to pick an answer from a to g with the correct answer being h make it far from the ideal book to build your confidence or knowledge.

great certification tool!!!
but u will need also transcenders for exam preparation. contact me on my gmail account (certstuff). i will send u a list of transcenders i can sell u, 10$ each one. thnks

I got this book with a little over 1.5 years of exchange experience and I know quite a bit but thought i could learn alot more and certify in it. Well this book did help me the 2nd time through reading it. The biggest help really was the practice exams. I took the study exams and learned more that way then with reading. I would recommend this book only to those that actually understand Windows 2003, 2000 and NT both directory structure and network structure. There is alot of networking involved such as firewalls and opening ports. Overall it is a good book.

I've just bought the book from amazon, and first of all what I can say about it is that it's very cheap comparing if I bought it here in portugal. the price here is around 83 dollars, so I could almost buy 3 books with that money. really, buying from abroad is much more pleasant than buying in portugal... As for the book... well, better wait for it! :D

I got this book with a little over 1.5 years of exchange experience and I know quite a bit but thought i could learn alot more and certify in it. Well this book did help me the 2nd time through reading it. The biggest help really was the practice exams. I took the study exams and learned more that way then with reading. I would recommend this book only to those that actually understand Windows 2003, 2000 and NT both directory structure and network structure. There is alot of networking involved such as firewalls and opening ports. Overall it is a good book.

I've just bought the book from amazon, and first of all what I can say about it is that it's very cheap comparing if I bought it here in portugal. the price here is around 83 dollars, so I could almost buy 3 books with that money. really, buying from abroad is much more pleasant than buying in portugal... As for the book... well, better wait for it! :D

This books seems to be written with more focus on the title of each chapter then the actual content of the pages. Exchange newbies will be in awe of the titles, expecting to get a lot of meat.

Here's my problem, as a fine example page 11-9 has obvious errors, and a lazy walk-through of setting up an Outlook profile to use RPC over HTTP! They give the opposite answers that MSFT does in their own white papers. How is a test taker supposed to trust this book or even pass a test? RPC over HTTP is one of the MAJOR features that came out with Exchange 2003 (you better believe it will be on the test), and they can't even get that right? It makes me leary of a lot of the other areas in the book.

Despite that, there is still a lot of good content to read, which is the case for any 700+ page book. I would say, if you are a Microsoft Systems Admin this is a required book to have for reference. But buyer beware if you are looking for a test guide!

I bought this book and passed the test too. I found this book is very detailed. It helped me in exam and will help also in real world too. It has everythin you need to know for Exchange.

When I first read these reviews I hesitated even to put this book into my cart. But this is just as good as the majority of the MS Press books.
I mean what are these people talking about? No diagrams? Pratices (which can be found almost in every lesson) are FULL of diagrams.
Typos? The only typo I found was ELHO, which is supposed to be EHLO (you know, the ESMTP command) but if you can't figure that out you're probably too stupid to be a sysadmin. (No offense! :D)
No page numbers? Huh? Has the guy who wrote that review even looked at the book? I seriously doubt.

By the way I passed the exam for the first time and I gave myself a week to prepare. It's not difficult at all.

This book covers all of the test requirements as listed on the website for test preparation (go to the microsoft home page and put "/learning/exams/70-284.asp" after the ".com").

In addition, Mr. Willis and Mr McLean write in an easy to comprehend style that leads itself to following along on your test PC if you wish.

Then, as if ir were frosting on the cake, the CD contains very useful study tools like a 300-question test-prep by MeasureUp, the whole book in PDF format, and a 120-day eval copy of Exchange Server 2003.

I definitely recommend this book as an excellent study guide for both those who want to pass the certification exam and those who just want a more detailed explanation of how to implement and manage Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

Thanks to the authors for making it easy!!

To some, it may not go far enough. To those, I would merely point out Microsoft's "Prerequisites" for the test. No book can give one two years experience; but this book gives a disciplined reader with a couple of PCs the ability to build their own hands-on experience in a step-by-step manner.

I am really starting to like the new MS Press books... Apparently even MS can learn!!

I just had to add in my 2 cents. I too am teaching a course on Exchange from this book, and I wish that we had used another book. The organization is not good, for example, it discusses connecting Exch 2k3 in an Exch 5.5 environment as well as migration in chapters 4 & 5, and has not even addressed what Exch 2k3 is and does and how to configure it at that point. Ch 3, on Administrative and Routing groups is severely lacking (no diagrams at all and does not go into any length about connectors, the routing engine, etc...). Chapter 6, on clustering and NLB, again should have been placed near the end of the book so that you would have covered virtual servers before the chapter on clustering. Additionally, in chapter 9, when they finally do talk about virtual servers, they repeat information from chapter 6, and muddy the distinction between the virtual server that encompasses the clustered installation with the virtual servers (such as POP3, IMAP4, NNTP, etc..) that you need to configure to provide services. Chapter 9, on virtual servers, is extremely repetitive.. It looks basically like they cut and pasted the same material from POP3 to the IMAP4 and NNTP sections and just noted a few of the differences. Rather than bringing out the commonalities, and saying it once, and then pointing out the differences, they say it over and over and over.. I'll spare the zeros and ones on the rest of the book. I've already used my 2 cents worth and don't want to add any more. I just really wish that I had read the reviews before we decided to use this book for the class.

I used this book to teach a course on Exchange based on someone else's recommendation. I really should have read the reviews here first. That was a terrible idea. There are technical errors, the activities don't work, and there are lots of surprise requirements. The hardware and software requirements listed at the beginning of the book are not all you will need to complete the labs. What a major pain this course was for me to use. I am very sorry that I purchased 15 copies of this book. Don't be fooled by high sales numbers, this product is not worth it.

This is without doubt the worst MCSE book I've read. There were no reviews here when I bought it (worse luck!) but I wish there had been - I wouldn't have wasted a month of my life studying it.

It is error strewn (major errors, not just typos, only some of which are mentioned in the errata web site), badly written, disorganised, unclear, full of redundant information and it will - as other reviewers have noted - force you to reinstall AD/Exchange every second chapter if you want to do the exercises.

I postponed the 70-284 exam twice as I felt I didn't understand the material even after going through the book TWICE.

In the end, believe me, the exam wasn't too difficult. Administering Exchange 2K3 isn't difficult either. This book won't convince you of that.

This is book is by far, the worst book that MSPress has ever produced. Generally the MSPress books are pretty good. I have only run into two titles that were poorly written/edited/proof-read. This is one of them, and interestingly enough, the other was also co-authored by Ian McLean. This book is so bad that I will never buy a book with his name on it again.

This book doesn't help to learn fast and efficient.
Everything in this book is explained in text, which makes learning very, very time-consuming. So many times a little diagram could have been be very helpful in explaining how the various components of such a complex system work together. It's not there. The authors leave it to the reader to reconstruct the diagram from the textual description. Takes time.
The book also doesn't have a single table. Up to the reader to reconstruct the tables from the text.
Also missing in this book are normal page numbers. Page numbering restarts from 1 at every chapter. Not very handy if you're working with the register.

This book is not the best resource for what is was intended: studying Exchange 2003. You might want to complement this book with technical articles that you download and print from the MS website, that will give some diagrams to complement the text.

There is not a single diagram in this book!
Everything in this book is explained in text, which makes learning very, very time-consuming. So many times a little diagram could have been be very helpful in explaining how the various components of such a complex system work together. It's missing. These authors obviously have had the diagrams next to them, described it from top to bottom and from left to right, then leave it to the reader to reconstruct the diagram from the textual description. Frustrating.
The book also doesn't have a single table. Up to the reader to reconstruct the tables from the text.
The most surprising thing missing in this book are page numbers! I never realized I used page numbers so often.
It's very hard to go back and forth, searching in the TOC or the register takes a lot of time to bring you to the section you need.

Another sign of the speed with which this book has been written: so many typos that it's really annoying.

This book is totally unfit for what is was intended: studying Exchange 2003.

Countless times I have been foolish enough to think that since it is a Microsoft product, there would be a higher quality of content, style, teachability, and quality. For me this book finally broke the camel's back. Why in the world that between two authors, all the proof readers, the senior editors, junior editors, editing editors, the project managers, acquisition editor, copy editors, desktop publishing specialist, etc etc etc, one cannot depend on a decent book with minimal errors (and I am not talking about spelling errors).

The book has you in a yoyo, dcpromoing up, down, back to standalone, then back to member server just to go through the books chapters. Just know that if you were to really go through the book as it is written, be prepared to have many machines with many operating systems, and also be prepared to build and rebuild just to learn Exchange 2003. (Hint: use vmware and answer files - also own All the operating systems and all the Exchange applications since 5.5) <-- Yeah, everyone just has those in their back pocket)

I have finished the book and the frustration of mistakes and serious errors on "how to's" alone could disappoint even an advanced technical MCSE. The authors are also over-zealous in using all the Microsoft jargon in every sentence when just some simple wording would have worked wonders. The authors also present step by step examples but leave out the very preparation where one has to be in order to start the step by step implementation. Most all of this could have been easily corrected by "someone really working through the book" as a person who wanted to learn Exchange 2003. Not someone with a "proof reader" title that does little more than review a page or two.

There are now other books that can teach you Exchange 2003. This book could be used as a 3rd book if necessary but not a first book. That is why they even get 2 stars. Microsoft seems to always get authors that are there for the paycheck and recognition but not for the customer support. Tony Redmond's book is exceptional.

(...)

Usually the MS Press cert books are pretty good, I've passed several of the MCSE (70-290, 291, 293, 294) tests recently and have been using these books as the primary preparation tools. Unfortunately this book does not live up to the others in the series. In fact, this book is poorly organized from start to finish. There are several places throughout the book where the authors seem to cut and paste from other chapters. All of the books that I have read lately contain some errors (usually typo's or features that were not finalized prior to the books release) but this book seems to more than its fair share.

It seems that the authors are trying to take a person without any prior skills and teach them what they have to know to pass the exam. Rather than focusing on Exchange the book is all over the place and does not really cover any subject in-depth. The chapters do not build on the subject in a logical order and tend to skip around within the lessons. One chapter your working with clusters and the next your working on recipients. After a couple chapters your working on virtual servers and how they work with clusters. The exercises in the book tend to have you rebuilding servers more than learning the software. In short there is very little continuity. The last thing that I will mention is that the book really mixes terminology.

I wish that there were more books about Exchange 2003 available. It looks like this one was just trying to get to market first and first is not always best. Especially this time.

I have to say, I kinda liked this book, even though I found a number of errors. Between this and Unleashed, you probably can't go wrong. But both left holes and technet wasn't much help. Eventually I found what I needed and agree with the other reviewer that winstructor's website is brilliant and I consequently passed my exam using their videos.

This book has quite a few labs, which were nice. But very little on things like Certificates and Front/Back End Servers.

Overall if I had to choose either book, I'd go with Unleashed, even though its not an exam prep book.

Although I've been looking for an exchange 2003 book for a while, this one fits well for exam and reference! The authors did a great job! Hats off.