Computing Internet Books

This is an excellent book, plenty of information and very well written, covering every aspect of a FreeBSD system.

I am a big fan of open source software. I've been a GNU/Linux user for years but I must admit I had never played with BSD before. I bought this book because I wanted to set up a network server at home and I thought it was the perfect occasion to try FreeBSD. I expected one of those thick and boring reference books but, hey! I am very glad I chose "Absolute FreeBSD" because it is the perfect example of how write a clear, informative, nice and accurate technical book. The book is not for the absolute beginner but, in general, it's very easy to read. It should be self-explanatory to anyone with a little experience in networking, UNIX-like systems or, in general, computer science.

The author is a FreeBSD developer himself, so he talks about the inner workings of the FreeBSD community, providing an interesting point of view of the operating system, not only as a regular user but also as one of its "insiders".

The book covers everything a BSD system administrator should know. It covers basic things like how to install the system, how to make backups and recover from data loss, how to configure the network, disk management, etc. It also includes detailed explanations and sysadmin tricks of the usual network services: DNS, SSH, DHCP, FTP, printing server, web Server, mail Server... The author also gets into more advanced topics like, kernel tunning, security, performance analysis and tunning or RAID management. I was particularly interested in using hard disk encryption. I thought getting it was going to be a pain in the neck but the book explains how to do it with 6 simple commands. Nice!

In general the book is well structured. Concepts are explained clearly and with a lot of examples. Some chapters cover so many concepts that my brain couldn't keep up with so much information and I had to take a break for a nice beer ;-) The book is worth it's price: 37 dollars for 700 pages.

Only one advice: Although it has a graphical interface, FreeBSD is normally configured trough the good old command-line. Don't expect this book to tell you how to configure your web server double-clicking on an icon, FreeBSD is not Ubuntu or Win2003. The book may not be suitable for Happy Windows Users, used too the click-next click-next click-next way. This book is for computer geeks, system administrators, people that enjoy using different operating systems, people that need to have a robust system to use as a network server, people that like to tune every detail of their machines, or people that need to learn freeBSD and have no time to google every single configuration detail. For any of those people, I highly recommend this book.

This book is worth every dollar.

Easy to read, you don't need to be already an experienced administrator or user to read this book

For a newcomer to FreeBSD, this book has been a godsend-plenty of info for newbies as well as plenty of (over my head) technical info for the advanced BSD users.

'Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD' is another hit in the No Starch collection of books which have their own unique layout and style of writing associated with the authors publishing with them. With around 700 pages of content you will learn the ins and outs of this Unix-like operating system and see how powerful it is and what it can do for you. If you use FREEBSD on the job or are just a tinkerer that plays with non Windows/Mac systems this will enable you do do administration, learn to programmatically script, and get behind the curtain to do more than you thought possible! If you need a FREEBSD book, No Starch makes learning FUN and it's a great addition to your library!

***** RECOMMENDED

The author presents a pretty good sampling of how-to material (it would be difficult to get full coverage of MOSS without a multi-volume issue) but falls a bit short of what I might expect from an "Inside..." title. I would have liked to see more detail on some of the deeper architectural workings of MOSS. The author no doubt knows product extension with .NET well and provides an abundance of attention - especially to search customization development. To the author and publishers' credit, the book is targetted to a developer audience. All in all a solid effort.

Patrick does a great job giving you a firehose approach to MOSS 2007 development. I love the chapter on customizing search using the API... fantastic!

I am very pleased with the amount of time I waited to receive this item. It was shipped quickly and I received it within a few days of making the purchase.

I purchased the Praxis Official Guide 2008 in preparation for the Praxis I exam. Although the reading and writing sections were similiar to the sample tests in this guide, the math section did not scratch the surface of the types of problems I was confronted with.

In fact, I read and reread the preparation tips several times. I practiced the previous tests given religiously, and I memorized all of the formulas suggested in this book. I went into the testing area feeling confident and prepared, and left the examination feeling overwhelmed and defeated.

I'm still waiting for a response from ETS.org regarding this situation. My suggestion is to look for other resources to properly prepare yourself for the Praxis I.

Some of the problems in the PPST I test were the same as the problems in this book. The Essay Topics section was right on the money. The topic I was given was the same as one of the topics in this book. I wish I would have studied this section more. I also purchased REA PRAXIS PPST tests.

I passed two of the three tests - Reading: 175; Math: 185, and I am still waiting for the results from the writing test.

If you are preparing for the PRAXIS I test, I strongly suggest you get both books.

Not a great choice for PLT. This book only gives an outline of topics covered along with three practice tests. The content area sections only gives around 15 sample questions and answers, that's it. More than half of the book is dedicated to the PPST and they are covered in far more depth.

Great book to prepare for the Praxis series of tests. Excellent!! Great deal too!

The first thing to understand is that my 3 star rating isn't for the book itself, but for the edition. This book is well written and contains many good principles, but the material is dated and could use some touching up. For example, the network monitoring section still covers NetSaint.

I bought and read this book prior to starting my first job as a system administrator. I learned a bit, but as I wasn't a rank beginner, it wasn't really all that much. Besides the fact that the material is dated, I found the multi-vendor approach to be somewhat detrimental. As I was going to work for a Debian-based shop, the material for the commercial versions of Unix did me no good, resulting in what is essentially, wasted space.

For someone who is brand new to unix and is going to be thrown to the wolves as a system administrator, this book would be worth reading, and given that target audience, this is an excellent book. But if you're already somewhat familiar with the concepts of running and managing a unix based system, your time and money are better spent on other products

Used this book as a starter for Unix, already armed with basic knowledge and concepts this book helped me better understand the inner workings of UNIX.

I spend most of my time administering linux systems, but also the occasional Solaris machine. Having this book is great for times like when I just can't remember the equivalent Solaris command for examining a print queue. It's not the kind of book you're going to read from cover to cover, and I may never look at 600 of its 1100+ pages, but I still consider it a required book on my shelf, and I refer to it a 2-3 times a month. The information in it is consistently clear and accurate.

I recently bought this as a gift for a college graduate who was embarking on a sysadmin career, and it was very well-received.

Good writer. Easy to understand. Good examples. I also like the examples in Larry L. Smith's "Rosetta Stone Series for Programmers and Script-Writers" (3 books: Bash Shell, Korn Shell, and Perl). The examples in Randal K. Michael's "Mastering UNIX Shell Scripting" are also helpful for serious UNIX-LINUX users.

I'll keep this short and to the point, since the numerous other reviews already speak to what this book has to offer: It's not cheap, but it is worth every penny. The book provides a thorough overview on administrating unix/unix-like systems, and will help you become a better sysadmin, period.

Small, Informative, and easy to use. It does everything it needs to do.

I would very quickly buy this book again.

I used this book as a reference to take a certification exam without ever touching CSS and scored in the 96th percentile... enough said.

I'm doing a lot of CSS work these days and figured this guide would be a good book to have on hand to quickly pull out when I can't remember a selector or how to write a certain pseudo-class, etc. And it *is* a decent little guide for the most part. It gives a short description of each element and what browsers support it (although no version information included) and even has a basic CSS tutorial included. Certainly not substitute for the full length book, but okay to quickly refer to.

The thing I didn't like about the book is that it just often seems to take a little time for me to find things in it. There are just so many different ways a "pocket guide" could be done that would make it a matter of seconds to find the element you need information on...with this one I'm often resorting to using the index to find what page it is on. Since the entire book is black-and-white and there's no page separation of element from element, it all just kinds of blends together and just visually is not very pleasing to use. If you are familiar with Visibone web developer cards/sheets I find those much more useful as a quick-reference due to how well the information is presented. While the material is not as comprehensive as what this book includes, I find myself pulling it out more often than this book simply because I can literally get the information I need in a second versus spending time just trying to locate it in this book.

So final score...it's a decent book and worth considering. If you've used other O-Reilly pocket books and like them, you'll probably like this as well. But I personally think there are easier "pocket guides" available.

Large books, by their very nature, can have good points and bad points. After all, if you have a couple or several hundred pages worth of material, you are bound to get some things right and some things wrong.
But these pocket reference books from O'Reilly are great. They aren't for learning, rather they are what they say they are: a pocket reference. (Nice to see some truth in advertising for a change.)
If you buy this book you will use it. A lot. Period.

Great little reference book. It is not intended to be a learning tool. If you want that, try the Head First book on HTML/XHTML/CSS that O'Reilly also publishes.

It's a super little time-saver, and also makes for a quick read when designing a new page or project, to see if something you haven't used previously could benefit your work.

It's a practical guide on defining service characteristics and design principles in multiple levels, from component implementation to application design to enterprise architecture. Very digestive material.

This book is really useful specially for a person who want to learn the basic of web service and then go deep for XML and Web Service usage in Service Oriented domain.

Thomas Erl covers SOA perfectly. The ebb and flow of the book is excellent. He does not cover proprietary technologies, and rightfully so. However, he explains the W3 standards of XML, SOAP, Web services and many key service models. He also is aware of corporate culture and thinking realistically as you take on a SOA implementation. This book has made me a better software developer. Keep things autonomous and keep things abstract.

The entire book can be summed up on 3 to 4 pages. Mostly the book regurgitates the same concepts over and over to fill up the pages, using a plethora of technical terminology to abstract it's own meaningless. For the most part the book is intended to give you an overview of verity of technologies encapsulated in SOA architecture, but from a very distant perspective.

I read this book as part of a technical book club at work. The concensus of the group is that there is very little useful information in it. It contains many diagrams and charts that provide little benefit other than to increase the page count. It contains mis-information concerning competing technologies such as CORBA and constantly treats SOA and Web Services as if they are interchangeable terms. Much of the information is superficial. The bright spot in the book was that the large number of nearly identical charts made reading the chapters go very quickly. Finally, the author often seems to be using the book as advertisment for his company. There are much better resources for gaining an understanding of SOA and Web Services. Don't waste you money on this one.

This book provides a great overview of most of the features and functionality you will need to implement a portal solution using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It not only discusses the features of SharePoint but it provides great tips and techniques on issues like planning, migrating, creating and governing your portal solution. In addition, it has some good how to sections which walks the reader through the implementation of certain features of the product.

Unlike most SP books out there at the moment, isn't all about how to install, set-up, administer, and write custom code for a SP deployment. It's much more aimed at end users, and people who need to plan a collaboration strategy around a shared knowledge base.

While a lot of it is management-theoretical in the first few chapters, it's sensible advice that gets one to think about things that are necessary to address, but wouldn't automatically have come to mind. The central message of "the 4 Cs" communication, collaboration, consolidation, and consistency help one to both recognize what's good, and also how to get there.

I think that chapters 1-3 are required reading for anyone in a human management role who will be involved with rolling out SharePoint as a collaboration tool.

Chapters 4-7 are more aimed at admins, so I skipped them.

Chapter 8 is great for individual site planning with "how to" and, more importantly "why to" and "when not to" advice on blogs, wikis, team sites, and their coherent integration.

The fastest payback for a reader comes in Appendix A which documents 24 things that a SP user needs to know how to do, from adding a files to a document library, to targeting information visibility by audience type.

Essential SharePoint 2007 provides amazing guidance on how to architect your site. This book starts with high level concepts that any team implementing a collaboration solution should know. Although there is not a lot of detail on how to customize SharePoint with the object model or through code, this a great book for Business Analysts and Architects looking to improve their skills as well as junior developers wanting to understand how to build a system correctly. If you design and build SharePoint sites and have not read this book, I would recommend reading it. Keep in mind this book is not about developing on SharePoint, as the book points out - this book discusses higher level topics and shows how to interact with SharePoint through the user interface.

Good overview of the product. Give architects and generalists a quick feature listing, with some depth on working with the features. If you're a developer it will help you know what's there to work with, but no real coding samples. If you're an administrator, then this definately is helpful.

I have done a number of sharepoint implementation as a consultant, and I would say that this book offers the same type of strategy I've known for the last few years. When tackling a sharepoint implementation a number of questions are needing to be answered. Most people do not know what to ask and what to take into consideration. I would say if you read this book, you'll at least have the basic questions ready and an understanding on how to match the portal capabilities to the needs of the organization. Chapters 1 - 7 offer a good insight on how to plan out the portal. Governance alone is a great topic, most companies don't even consider it. Most companies think that you turn it on and it runs, this book looks at how to keep the portal relevant in the business.

One area that is not covered is IRM, although this is a big topic, and worthy of a book in itself, it should at least had a section or a chapter dedicated to it. I didn't see one.

I recommend this book as a great resource for planning a portal implementation, its high level, but gets the point across and gives plenty to consider.

I have used this book as a Photoshop text book for two years in a 3 month Multimedia Specialist Vocational Course I teach. Students come into my course at many skill levels, ranging from new with no experience to graphic professionals with over 25 years experience.

I have often heard from students "If I had only known that before!" and then an explanation of how much time one of Deke's tips would have saved them on some past project.

The introductory videos to each lesson are packed with useful information. The practical exercises are fun and inspiring as well as aimed at users from all skill levels. The explanations are clear, concise and well thought-out. Deke's humor helps to keep things from being overwhelming.

I strongly recommend this book from an author who knows Photoshop inside out for anyone who wants to learn Photoshop. Introducing my students to this book is one of the best things I do for them.

I have had college classes in photoshop. I could say that I have forgotten more about photoshop than most people know. Unfortunatly this means I have forgotten almost all that I knew. I found myself a beginning student at a new version of photoshop. This is a good book to sit down and go through the exercises. Good combination of video lectures and workbook exercises. I have just finished chapter six out of twelve this morning. You can not work your way through this book without coming away with a solid base in photoshop. After making it half way through this book, I am able to do things that I had no clue were even possible.

Bought this for my son, who found it helpful while taking classes for his graphic design classes.

I am a newby here. I ordered different books to learn CS2, and this book is amazing. I don't have anything original to add to all the excellent comments people already wrote, I just felt compelled to give it its five starts. The book is clear, well organized, easy to follow, and gives you a pretty good understanding of every single topic. It's not just do this and this, like a recipe. This was the book I was looking for!

Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One (One-On-One) This is not a book for any digital photographer who wants to increase his or her understanding and proficiency in essential "finishing" techniques of digital images. It barely addresses or doesn't address at all the necessary skills of adjustment levels, working with curves, and so on. He recommends too using auto fixes and variations which ruin the integrity of a digital image, and concentrates instead on creating slick finished products. It reminds me in a way of a class I took that was supposed to educate a student in approaching an image with CS2, but instead dealt with all the whacky things you could do to a picture with distortion filters and so. You come away thinking you can torture an image any number of ways without effecting the integrity of the pixels. The parts of the DVD I was able to watch were sketchy and too brief. I would recommend instead anything by Scott Kelby, Bruce Fraser, and David Blatner.

I have found this book to be very helpful, with easy to find answers to my questions.

I was very happy with my purchase. It was very easy to order. The item arrived on time and it was in exactly the condition as stated. I would purchase from this buyer again.

It was just what I was looking for, and just as I expected. He assumes you know NOTHING and goes from there. Another good book in the Dummies series.

I am an accountant. I was extremely disappointed in this book. Not well structured at all. It doesnt seem to know if it wants to be a reference book, a book for beginners or a book for those that have Excel knowledge and want to figure out the different features.
In the end the book is a help to no one.

I was disappointed. Although it is good for very basic beginners, I was hoping it would help with functions that are more difficult. The Dummies Books are so good at explaining things in friendly terms. I was looking for the friendly terms to help me understand complicated functions. I was out of luck. I would only recomment this product for the very basic beginner.