Computing Internet Books

This is my very first time to work with PowerPoint let alone 2007. The book is filled with Tips,Notes, and descriptions of all the tabs in 2007. However, I would like to have more detailed "How To" on the many creative things that you can do. The book will tell you where to go if you are looking for something in particular which makes it a good reference book. But I would like more detail more depth with all the creative word art and effects, and much more that 2007 has available. Overall it is a pretty good book for introducing the many amazing features of the 2007. And I agree that the CD that comes with it is somewhat worthless in my opinion. The book does point out that you do not have to be creative to make and awesome Presentation with 2007. It does everything for you.

It goes a long way to help you with a "fun" product.

This is a very good book for everyday reference. It covers all of the basics well, and intermediate also. The included disk is weaker than the book. A stronger disk would get it a 5. It claims to be the only Powerpoint book you will ever need. It also lists on the cover that it is for beginners and intermediate, this listing is accurate. There are some advanced things I would like to do with Powrpoint, that I have seen done, this book does not cover. If the author did an advanced book, I would buy that also. Easy style, thorough in what it covers.

Great book. I had the 2003 version, and the 2007 version was well worth the upgrade the first week.

I have been using this text for a research paper on IT Work Trends, and so far, I have been impressed with the layout and the content of this book.

Overall, what this book serves to do is to:
Introduce the reader to the gender inequalities present in IT
Outline the social factors contributing to this inequality
Outline the trajectory of interest in IT from middle school to high school and even to college
The role of women in IT presently
What we can do to get rid of gender inequality in IT, down to the secondary school level.

The small sample sizes in some of the Chapters (especially Chapter 2) may seem too small, and I must emphasize that it is important to understand why the sample sizes are small before taking some of the statistics to heart (or rejecting them for that matter).

All in all, this resource is to-the-point and easy to use for research. Aside from those who have a specific interest in the subject matter covered in this book, I would also recommend this book for educators who are concerned about some of the overarching effects of gender discrimination.

RECONFIGURING THE FIREWALL: RECRUITING WOMEN TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACROSS CULTURES AND CONTINENTS is a pick for college-level collections strong in both information technology and women's studies and careers. It surveys the major challenges involved in recruiting girls and women into majors and careers in information technology, considering activities, programs, and routines designed to incorporate women into programs ranging from science and engineering to academic research and education. Educators and any involved in information technology recruits in general and women's studies in particular will find this packed with important suggestions and insights.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Use this book as a supplementary book in your exam prep. The Certification Bible is the daddy!

I'll admit that I have not fully read the contents of this book. I started off by going through the Skill Assessment and chapter Review Questions in order to evaluate where my weak areas are. Based on my experience with these mini-tests, I'm not holding out hope for high quality in the rest of the book. Many of the questions are unclear on what they're asking, and I've run accross several that are flat out WRONG in their answers. The CD test is useless, as it merely recycles the chapter review questions, and includes the same errors (plus others--like having the correct answer by a multiple answer (i.e., correct answer is both A & E) but only allowing you to choose one). I've used Sybex books in the past for my MCSE, and always felt they were of good quality, but this one is a definite let down.

Having bought the 1st edition by Govanus, I was unpleasantly surprised by its insufficient content and rambling commentary about the author's experiences. When I saw the bad reviews it got, I decided to try Sybex again and buy this 2nd edition by the Klingon sounding Hryhoruk. It was definitely better and worth the expense. BUT, after having passed all the chapter exams with scores of 95 or 100, I failed one of the two final exams on the included CD, which asked a significant number of questions that were NOT covered by the 2nd edition, but were covered on the 1st edition! It seems that Sybex decided to use/recycle questions from its 1st edition in the 2nd edition without coordinating or checking on their relevance. This can be very upsetting on the day before taking the real exam! You need to find at least one other source of study, since I found this 2nd edition Sybex book to be really lacking in the troubleshooting part of the exam, which I failed. Fortunately, my strengths in the other areas brought my overall exam score up to 81%, so I did get the Server+ certification. Since troubleshooting is essential in real life, Sybex has to get this part improved so that you don't suffer from the paper certification syndrome of good theoretical knowledge, but little practical application.

I have the first edition of Sybex+, authored by Gravous. Very disappointed by finding a second edition within 12 months !! I thought I'm bought something good and special, not something not vaild or accurate so Sybex changed the author and issue a new edition very fast this way !! I bought it in Feb 2002, but didn't know a second edition is coming away next month, otherwise I will wait, because I failed in the exam and I perefered to wait 6 months before retaking it. I get tired of reading several stories of his experience. By reaching the mid of the book I start forgetting what I read before, so start over. I agree to what said above, won't use it as the only study source for the exam.
Sybex, you were very good. What happened?

As a standalone book, it does a fair job in preparing a Server+ candidate for the exam. End of chapter review questions along with good diagrams help the reader. I found the storage device chapter to be quite good. However, I felt that the chapters often went overboard on extraneous topics. Depending on how you look at it, you may consider it extra filling or a waste of time in your Server+ preparations. I found the included CD-ROM a good tool with its included test engine and searchable pdf, though some of the practice questions came out of left field. As in not even covered in the actual book which makes you doubt yourself in your preparedness for the actual exam. I would recommend using this book as an additional reference for spot checks to your main Server+ materials.

Now in a fully updated and expanded second edition, Designing Systems For Internet Commerce by computer security experts and consultants G. Winfield Treese and Lawrence C. Stewart is an informed, thoughtful, and imminently practical examination of what it takes to create an effective and secure system for successful Internet commerce. From learning the basics of Extensible Markup Language (XML), to adapting to mobile and wireless systems, managing shopping carts and other online means of taking orders, to exploiting the Internet to market one's goods at a much lower cost, Designing Systems For Internet Commerce is an excellent and highly recommended introductory reference for any company or corporation seeking to make the most of the twenty-first century's advances in technologically driven commerce and networking.

The first part of the book is about doing business, the second about technology. Although it covers all the process of doing business online, the book does not focus very good in either part. Very good for beginners, and has some interesting information for most people, but there are other more focused books that discuses each process of the online business in depth.

The book is geared for IT professionals. This still is the only book that views Internet solutions in a decomposable architectural perspective. It contains a good chapter on the value chain, payment systems and transaction processing. The graphics are clear and reusable. It had a little too much overview material on related topics and not enough alternatives to the authors' company solutions. Great book for budding technical architects. More books are needed that address lessons learned from real architects. This fills that gap.

I not really went through all contents inside the book because I read it somewhere at the book store near my town . Well it really can help much for my E-Commece

This book feels to me like the authors came from a teaching background, had a few original ideas about how to cover certain broad topics in their own personal way, and then went overboard saying the same things over and over again as if paid by the word.

I had to buy this book because it was required for a class at Regis University Online. I would have preferred to choose my own book. I started reading diligently and eventually came to the conclusion that the book was a waste of time. Even if the blithering was taken out and the useful information condensed, the book still wouldn't be saying very much.

Here's an example from chapter 5, "Conflicting Goals and Requirements." The reader expects to learn how to balance the two. Instead, we get this (this is the chapter summary):

"Whenever different participants in a system have different goals and requirements, there is a potential for conflict. This is particularly true in a new industry like Internet commerce, where there are few established standards. Our advice is to build a list of the participants in your system, and to be very clear about their goals, interests, and agendas. Understanding the participants, their goals, and their interests is very important in framing both the business problem and the technical challenges to be overcome."

...huh? No answers, just laborious advice telling you to be aware of the problem. I would expect this sort of thing from a nerdy friend that thinks he knows what he's talking about and just likes to hear himself talk. Or from a business meeting where people like to make lists but don't have a clue about what to do about the issues at hand.

If you really, truly don't have a clue about Internet commerce, and want to read 350 pages of monotony and still not have a clue, this book may be of interest to you. But if you're intelligent enough to be reading reviews first, you know enough to look elsewhere.

This is an item that I was waiting for. A textbook that will teach me to become familiar with Microsoft Publisher. You have my highest rating. Thank you.

Donald Woodson

All the files required to do the exercises in this book come with a teachers edition. If you buy this book, you would have to already know Publisher in order to create the files required to complete all the exercises. If you can do that, you don't need this book.

I can see that this book has gotten many good reviews, but i think it is THE WORST textbook I've ever had.

Layout is extremely unprofessional. (often insufficient whitespace, inline numbers, symbols, parens and italics, very often flipping back and forth because text and exercise questions reference (poorly drawn) diagrams on other pages) like this is an example of bad layout. heh.

Exercise questions are poorly worded. (like Ex 11.5, 14.3)

General errors in main text, figures and solutions. (like pg320 last paragraph, Example 13.2 on pg 402, Fig 11.4 on pg 299, solution for Ex 13.6 on pg 641)

Dr.S.Keshav has brought out a style of times that helps us best understand the subject right at its nerve centre. Infact his approach "Engineering Approach" to help understand and appreciate the subject is what makes the difference. No other book has provided such a clarity and direct dive into the subject of networking technology. This review of mine is due two years and am glad having made it today.

I don't have anything other than superlatives for this book. I would probably compare this with, say, "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan & Ritchie, which is an accepted C programming bible. The book is NOT painfully huge yet it makes the reader get the right intuition very easily on almost every topic in networking.

Every concept either has either a) rigourous analysis b) references to where rigourous analysis could be found c) or both

I particularly liked the "scheduling" chapter coz I had to read a couple of research papers on the topic, yet my basic intuition wasn't strong.

In the next edition (if there is one planned), I would like to see concepts on GPRS, 3rd Generation Wireless Systems and even 4th generation IP-core cellular systems (ICEBERG research project at UC berkeley) considering that there are > 500 million cellphones worldwide and increasing at a much faster rate than Internet.

Dr. Keshav, if you do read this, I would like to thank you for doing such a wonderful turn to the networking community by writing this terrific book.

This is one of the few books that starts with atoms and goes right upto traffic characterizations. Beginners can also benefit a lot from this book, though they might sometimes have to refer to other more basic books. The approach is fantastic and the explanations are great. He uses examples which clarify your concepts and make you think. There is an entire chapter on design issues. That one is a winner. There is also a great bibliography at the end. It makes you wonder; all the time and effort required to write a book of such clarity. The book is great. Its worth the time and the money.

I am a senior engineer for network security operations who enjoys learning about networking technologies. I read this book because it compares and contrasts telephone, Internet, and ATM networks. I also have a general interest in learning how networks operate. I concentrate on security, but I realize knowing more about networks in general helps my intrusion detection work. I strongly recommend reading this book if you develop or research networking products. Less focused readers will quickly become overwhelmed, as I was!

Mr. Keshav states "the bulk of this book is written at a level suitable for first-year graduate students in computer science or electrical engineering." He is not kidding! While Mr. Keshav does an excellent job discussing technical material, the extreme level to which he takes explanations demands a very dedicated reader. I was happy enough to learn of the many trade-offs required for sound network device design. Once Mr. Keshav began illuminating exactly how some technologies work (with theorems, equations, and statistics), I began skimming.

My favorite sections included chapters 1 through 4, the "basic" material introducing telephone, Internet, and ATM networks. Chapters 5 (Protocol Layering), 6 (System Design) and 7 (Multiple Access) were also good. Beyond chapter 7 (with some exceptions), I found the material deeper than the interest level I have as a security professional.

Some may wonder about the relevance of a book written in 1996 to current networking practice. I believe the bulk of the text remains useful, since it uses technological examples to frame underlying design approaches. Furthermore, Mr. Keshav provides a way to think about networks by defining crucial terms and concepts in clear terms. These definitions are reinforced by excellent summaries, tables, and glossaries.

"An Engineering Approach" provides an incredible number of answers to the "why" questions of telephone, Internet, and ATM networking. Other books will give mainly the "what" or sometimes "how." "What" is enough for doing daily admin, "how" is enough to improve network performance, and "why" is needed to build better networks. If you need all three levels, give Mr. Keshav's book a try!

After having completed Microsoft's MCAD certification, I am using this text along with the Tom Carpenter text to prepare for MCTS and MCITP certification. Though I haven't taken the exam yet, the material appears to be covered in a thorough and in-depth fashion. Yet, it does not get bogged down in unnecessary detail.

Excellent book!

Well written and in depth, this book should cover everything necessary to pass these tests.

I have two complaints:

1) The book is laid out functionally for SQL Server, not for each test. So, for example, when you are studying for the 70-442, it may involve a portion of chapter 3, 4, 5, and 8, but all of 12 and 13. All this information is entwined with the stuff for the other tests.

2) You choose to only take one of the tests on the CD. For example - you couldn't say just test for the 70-441 test. I found the CD questions less useful than books dedicated to one test because of this.

These are minor complaints though, and I'm not really sure the issues can be avoided to begin with. Don't let them stop you from using this as your resource to pass these three tests.

For the 431 exam, I used the (Tom) Carpenter book as my primary study guide and this book as a side reference. My main reason for purchasing this book is for the next two exams (441,442). After taking the 431 test and looking up some questions I guessed at in this book, I regret not using this book as my primary study guide. This book seems to point out the exact information needed to get through the test. I look forward to using it for the next two exams. Note that the author of this book is the technical editor for the Carpenter book.

Update to previous review:
I just passed both exams (441 & 442) without difficulty and with plenty of time remaining (each exam took about 2 hours). This is definitely the book to use for these exams. The topics and sample questions are on target with the actual test. Be sure to review the topic list for each exam in the front of the book before taking the test. The 'what you need to know' section at the end of each chapter is not always accurate. Also - the explanation of cascade deletes is incorrect in the book.

The end-of-chapter exam questions were perfect for helping me know what I know and what I don't know. I already passed the 70-431 and 70-441 exams and the questions I looked at in the back of the chapters hit the knowledge needed to pass these exams.

Unfortunately I failed the 70-442 exam before this book was released. However, after reviewing the end-of-chapter exam questions, I saw exactly what I needed to brush up on. I spent several days in a marathon study session doing the exam questions in the back of each chapter for the 70-442. For anything I missed, I studied the material in the chapter. In addition to learning what I needed for the exam, I also learned a couple things I didn't know about in SQL Server 2005. I then took and passed the 70-442.

This book was just what I needed. I only wish I had it before I took the 70-442 the first time.

Very disappointed. I have a 950 page book that does not cover setting up an IOS router for remote access using PPTP or L2TP. WTF? Heck - that's why I bought this expensive book. If you have deep pockets and can buy whatever cisco gear you like then this book will likely introduce you to many possible VPN solutions. But there seems to be a bias in the book toward large enterprise solutions - with little or no consideration given to SOHO and small businesses. Many of us make do with the resources that we have available and can't just go out a buy stuff because the author thinks a remote access concentrator would be "best." I still can't believe that he doesn't cover configuring IOS for access by Windows PPTP or L2TP clients. I'm stunned. With this glaring omission I can't help but wonder about the completeness of the other content. Thumbs down.

Richard Deal's book, The Complete Cisco VPN Configuration Guide, sets out to provide a comprehensive reference for networking professionals designing, deploying, and managing VPN solutions. This book covers the foundational information as well as step by step guides to configuring VPN solutions on Cisco VPN Concentrators, software and hardware clients, Cisco IOS routers, and Cisco PIX and ASA appliances.

The book is broken down into 6 parts: VPNs, Concentrators, Clients, IOS Routers, PIX Firewalls, and a Case Study. The VPN chapters provide the reader with an excellent foundation in VPNs. These chapters cover topics such as VPN types and topologies, technologies used to establish VPNs, as well as VPN implementations, such as IPsec, PPTP, L2TP, SSL. The next section focuses on the Cisco VPN Concentrators. Mr. Deal provides information on the Cisco 3000 series of VPN concentrators as well as the features of various software releases. The next few chapters focus on different deployment scenarios. These scenarios include remote access with IPsec, Remote access with PPTP, L2TP, and WebVPN (SSL), and site-to-site. The final chapters of the concentrator section cover management and troubleshooting. The next section covers software (Cisco and Microsoft) and hardware (Cisco) VPN clients. The fourth section focuses on Cisco IOS Routers. This section follows a similar layout to the concentrator section providing details about site-to-site and remote access VPN connections as well as a troubleshooting chapter at the end. It does highlight the differences in the configuration as well. As with the concentrators, Mr. Deal include specific product information. While helpful in dealing with existing equipment, it quickly will become obsolete as Cisco EOS/EOL equipment and software from these lists. It might have been more practical to provide URL references to Cisco's website. The fifth section covers VPN deployments with the Cisco PIX and ASA security appliances. Again, the layout is consistent with the IOS Router and Concentrator sections. The final section is a case study which brings together most of the concepts covered in the book.

This book is an excellent reference on VPNs. It should be in every networking professional's personal library who designs, deploys, and manages a VPN solution. The diagrams are clear and easy to follow. The troubleshooting chapters of each section provide excellent tools as well as common mistakes to help the networking professional deploy their solution successfully. The case study provides an invaluable example of a real world deployment. While the book is not advertised to be an exam preparation or certification guide, it could easily be used as a supplement towards those studies.

Well this book proved few things to me... Firstly VPN is not rocket science and secondly I havent seen any better book than this that Cisco press might have printed. IPSEC, GRE, SSL, L2TP, PPTP, WEBVPN were the term that used to give me nightmares. However this book was just perfect and 1 month of reading this book makes me very confident about the whole technology. I generally followed each chapter with real hands on and I wasnt bumped even once anywhere. I will seriously recommend this book to everyone, if VPN is what you want to learn, stop your search here! NOW!

Richard Deal's "The Complete Cisco VPN Configuration Guide" provides a complete step by step guide on how to configure VPN on Cisco Concentrators, software (including Windows VPN client) and hardware client, IOS routers, PIX and ASA security appliances.

The book also discusses what to look for to troubleshoot VPN connection, provides common real-life problems you will experience when setting up VPN and a case study at the end of the book to review all the concepts and configuration from previous chapters.

The book does an excellent job in informing when and why to select certain Cisco VPN products over others. It also provides up to date information on VPN configuration guide for PIX. Both PIX FOS 6.0 and 7.0 VPN configurations are discussed.

The book focuses about five chapters discussing concentrators. This is understandable as Cisco concentrators are more widely used for remote access than other Cisco VPN products. However, I would like to see the book to give equal weight to PIX and ASA appliances as more and more are adopting them as concentrators are gradually being phased out.

The book will be more complete if it mentions other VPN configuration features such as SDM for IOS routers, ASDM for PIX and ASA and VPN Router Management Center for Cisco Works. The author has omitted these due to space constraints since the book is already almost 1,000 pages.

In summary, this book will benefit any network administrators with intermediate to advance level of knowledge that need to use Cisco products for VPN implementation. This is the best "how-to" Cisco Press book for Cisco VPN and it fulfills its mission as a complete resource for understanding Cisco VPN implementation.

You might also want to check other Richard Deal's well written security book titled "Cisco Router Firewall Security".

I was hoping that the book would spend more time on actual router configuration rather than use GUI-related products. It was difficult to divine the actual config while wading through page after page of screen-shots.

If you have a current installation of Eclipse and you are using JPA (ex: Hibernate), don't even think about using the book's update site. It will totally hose up your entire Eclipse installation and you are looking at a complete re-installation.

It's a shame, because otherwise the book seems to be very helpful. Rumor is that they are planning an update sometime late 2008, but none of the bookstores have a publication date on it yet.

I purchased 8 copies and distributed them to our team. Several team members went through each chapter, building the sample application on top of the Eclipse RCP. Each of us, whether or not we built the application, have learned a great deal about using Eclipse. I highly recommend this book to any software team that is starting a new product or that is in the throes of refactoring / recasting an old one. The book will jump-start your Eclipse experience.

I couldn't do my RCP application without this book. its example application goes growing showing everything we need to learn to make an RCP application.

I stumbled into Eclipse when researching OSGI as a framework for a system I was designing. I was not looking forward to the drudgery and complexity of building all the required infrastructure over OSGI to build an actual product - what a wonderful discovery to see this gleaming system with smoothly integrated parts ready to do my bidding!
The authors make the apt analogy of launching a payload into space - so much of the work goes into the launch vehicle and ground control,etc, whereas to the payload designer the only interesting work is at the very tip of the rocket. As software developers we love generating the cool idea (the payload) and are not so excited about the other 90% which makes the real product - complex UI workflows, help, update, packaging, etc. Eclipse provides all the mechanisms and plenty of automated assistance for putting together your total system.
Perhaps you will find some disparities between the book and your downloaded version of Eclipse (I haven't yet) but this is not Visual Basic, this is a relatively deep but elegantly designed system which does require a certain level of understanding before you really get cooking with it, but this book does an excellent job with that. Once you get going, it's like having a team of 10 great programmers at your command.

This book is a very detailed and at the same time hands on treatement of what the RCP paradigm is all about. It begins with how to create using Eclipse a very functional and easy to do Chat application. As it is this
application shows the most generic and neccessary aspects of how to start an RCP application all the way to branding and packaging within it's first serveral chapters. Its' full of suggestions and tips of why you're doing various things to what not to do and why.

This book is for anyone from someone just wanting to know how it's done up to a professional Eclipse developer level. The chapters are nice and short which helps when you want to read it between work and home.

It does read as though there was thorough thought and planning from a number of sources in the layout and planning of this book.

it also will satisfy anyone wanting to know the deeper meanings of why they had to do what they did in the first several chapters further on into this material.

To me the total material ranges from easy-do-it-yourself application build kit material to A-1 college material that could be used in a semester course of RCP and eclipse.

It also offers at the end several references to things like the OSGI model that eclipse is modeled on now as well as other interesting items you never knew but form the basis of this wonderful platform called eclipse.

Once you read this book and look at the references of what people have done with Eclipse (specifcally RCP) from Nasa to the banking industry,
you'll realize that Eclipse RCP is to Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux and MacOSX as VisualStudio is to .NET

The book was an excellent book for beginners. I found that it walks through each section step by step with excellent examples. You start out with the basics and proceed into more complicated designs such as using xml and databases. I would definitely recommend this book for someone who is starting out with asp.net as it gives you a good footing into the language.

I have read almost all the chapters of this book. I have been programming with intermediate ASP for past 5 years. The reason I picked up the book was for the easy transition from ASP to ASP.Net and this book help me do that. The book explains ASP.Net 1.0 at the novice level. For serious developers this book can serve as an introductory book for ASP.Net. I have now moved on to Professional ASP.Net book by wrox and many times I have to go back to this book to look into introductory details of the new features of ASP.Net.

The book is well outdated (as of mid-2004).

I'm just finishing the Begining ASP.NET with VB.NET 2003. This was Wrox's suggestion as the follow-on book to really understand website database development. A real waste. The Begining ASP.NET provided the same level of detail.

The book did use SQL Server -- a plus -- which the Begining ASP.NET book lightly covered. But, not enough to justify the expense of buying the book and even more importantly the time to wade through it.

I have been a fan of wrox books in the past, but this is not one if their better ones. The writing was poor overall, and there were times where I read the infomration three times before I eventually started to search the internet for a better explaination. The chapters on xml were useful, but could have gone into a little more detail with simple ways to data bind instead of focusing on datagrids as a single solution. As a resource, the index is useless and no glossary to organize key concepts to reference was a disapointment.

This book does not look like from Wrox, it got only the bad side of Wrox books - put code on dark background to damage readers' vision.

The usefulness of this book are the examples, while the explanations are not all good. There are 13 authors for this book, the quality of each part of this book differ a lot. Unfortunately, the most importance parts for me: the OOP part and Control part, got the lowest quality. The technology used in these two parts is: put some words there but no real explanation on many important points; simply repeat the sample code to fill out the pages. This is more damaging because of readers' trust on Wrox books, I invested lots of time on this book without questioning, then I found I wasn't going anywhere.