Avatar (Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog

CompTIA Security+ Training Kit (Exam SY0-301) by David Seidl, Mike Chapple, James Michael Stewart (Microsoft Press)

April 30, 2013

After few months after the review of CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review, I’m now here to speak about it’s bigger brother: the Training kit. With its 569 pages, this book is more than twice the length of the Rapid Review one. Even if someone can think that they did a better summary in the Rapid Review one, I have to say that this is not the case for these two books. While the Rapid Review allows you to pass the exam if you already know the certification contents and you only need to evaluate your level and to refresh some contents, the Training Kit will teach you the certification contents.

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CompTIA A+ Rapid Review (Exam 220-801 and Exam 220-802) by Darril Gibson (Microsoft Press)

March 5, 2013

After Microsoft’s CompTIA A+ Training Kit, here I am reviewing the Microsoft’s A+ Rapid Review. This book is really similar to the book CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (this too by Microsoft Press). Darril Gibson, the book’s author, have compressed a huge amount of contents in a (relatively) small amount of pages (411). This is the first big difference in respect of the Security+ Rapid Review, since this book has more contents per page (and about the double of pages).

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Exam Ref 70-413: Designing and Implementing a Server Infrastructure by Steve Suehring (Microsoft Press)

January 29, 2013

I come to this book less than a month after reviewing the 70-410 Exam Ref. As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-413 exam. Speaking of the exam, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question. The book is split into an introduction, 5 chapters and the index. The first chapter helps to understand how to plan and deploy a server infrastructure.

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CompTIA A+ Training Kit (Exam 220-801 and Exam 220-802) By Darril Gibson (Microsoft Press)

January 15, 2013

Reading this book has helped me a lot understanding better how the A+ exam works. This book is tailored for the CompTIA A+ certification (and this led me to this book instead of another one, since I’m looking forward to take this certification). I really liked the fact that every chapter does cover conclusively an argument. In this way, you can choose which arguments read based on your interests and your needs.

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CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (Exam SY0-301) by Michael Gregg (Microsoft Press)

January 8, 2013

This book is pretty short (258 pages long) but is very dense. It is divided into 6 chapters + one appendix. For each atomic argument, the author does propose 1 to 3 True-or-False questions, their answer and the explanation. I did like the question-answer approach, since you understand immediately which is your level, therefore you can understand which parts you have to cover more and which less. What I did not liked at all about this structure is the layout.

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CompTIA Network+ Training Kit (Exam N10-005) by Craig Zacker (Microsoft Press)

January 1, 2013

Reading this book has helped me a lot understanding better how the networking works. This book is tailored for the CompTIA Network+ certification (and this led me to this book instead of another one, since I’m looking forward to take this certification. I really liked the “structureness” of this book. After a brief introduction (Chapter 1) the book author analyzes the whole networking stack starting from ground up. The first chapters, in fact, are about Physical layer (Chapter 2), Data-Link Layer (Chapter 4) and Network Layer (Chapter 6).

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Exam Ref 70-410: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 by Craig Zacker, Microsoft Press

December 21, 2012

This in not an O’Reilly book, even if you have found it on the O’Reilly website. In fact this book has been published by the Microsoft Press. Maybe this is a good thing, since we are talking about Windows Server, one of the main Microsoft products. Who can speak about Windows better than its creator? As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-410 exam.

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