MCSE Windows XP Professional Exam Cram 2 (Exam Cram 70-270)
Author: Dan Balter, Derek Melber, Ed Tittel
List Price: $29.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0789728745
Publisher: Que (21 November, 2002)
Sales Rank: 3,026
Average Customer Rating: 4.68 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Packed with useful info
This is my first Exam Cram book. It's packed with useful information, so much so that I read it twice. It's not only valuable for the taking the exam, I think it'll serve as a useful reference tool as well. The book starts out with some very useful info about the certification exam. The practice questions throughout the book are great for checking comprehension before moving on to the next section. And the sample test and CD work well for exam preparation. The only challenge is absorbing everything in the book.
I haven't read any other exam preparation books on XP Pro to compare this to. I don't see any reason to.
Rating: 4 out of 5
I passed!!.......but
Overall, this book is pretty damn good, and I learned a lot more about Windows XP than I knew before preparing for the exam, but the book could use some improvement.
1. The book covers many topics, but leaves some details out in specific cases. Some of these details were on the exam, and I only got them right because I had experience with them. One of the questions on the exam, (wasn't coverered in the book), but I had read an article in Windows & .NET magazine, and implemented it at our site.
2. The Prep-logic practice exam that came on the CD kind of sucked. It asked three questions about running a telnet server on your Windows XP machine??? I was kind of freaking out since I waited until the last minute to take the practice test. So like an idiot, I went online and purchased the full thing from Prep-Logic website. After taking another practice test, I felt a lot better, but I would doubt that any official MS exam has anything on it about running a telnet server. Also on the REAL exam, the questions are much more complicated than the Prep-Logic ones.
3. The book and the Prep-Logic Exam seem to conflict on a couple of ideas. Everyone seems to have their own theory of the correct page file size. I was always taught that Inital Size = 1.5 x Physical RAM and Maximum Size = 3 x Physical RAM. The book claims that the initial and the max should be the same. The prep-logic exam doesn't really say, but it did say that the max should never be over 2.5 x. I found a page on Microsoft that also claims the correct is what I was originally taught. Who knows???The good news is I passed the test and with some room to spare, and I probably wouldn't have been able to without this book, hands-on-experience, and some extra exams. Although, next time I won't be purchasing Prep-Logic.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Vast coverage small lack of detial
This book covers a lot of what you need to know to pass the exam, the reason I purchased this book was because I have purchased several exam cram 2 books recently and have enjoyed the wealth of advanced material found within those books and ive been using windows XP for a long time and didn't feel the need for a basic book. And typically exam cram books go into granular detail about some advanced topics and the reading is pretty much enjoyable.Sadly that is not the case with this book =\, this book is basically a dry read. Id guess half the book is just showing directions on how to open something up ( in insane step by step detail!!! ), and at the same time the book seems to cover all you need to know about TCP/IP in 2 full pages!
Basically the exam wants you to know a lot about GPO / Active Directory / Shares / networking and so on which isn't given too much detail in this book. Luckily im going for my MCSE and have some windows 2003 server books ( MS press self training series ) to review some AD concepts. As im already network+ a+ ccna etc certified I could make do with this book easily.
However if you are using this as your only book and this will be your first exam and you haven't taken a formal networking class or windows server class I would highly recommend getting an book on active directory and GPO ( any of the msce titles should suffice ) and for networking the exam cram network+ is an amazingly good read! And will help you breeze through the exam.
But if you have taken windows server courses and networking classes at a college or self study then by all means just buy this book read it once take the practice tests in the back of the book ( and on CD ) and you will easily pass the test ( I studied for all of 1 week ).
Similar Products
MCSE Windows Server 2003 Core Exam Cram 2 Pack (Exams 70-290, 70-291, 70-293, & 70-294)
Book Index