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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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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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. The other four are focused on the designing and implementation of the various components: network infrastructure services (chapter 2), network access services (chapter 3), Active Directory logical infrastructure (chapter 4) and Active Directory physical infrastructure (chapter 5).
A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers).
What is improvable for these question is the number.
I think they should put way more questions.
So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented.
The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security.
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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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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. Every question is answered right below the question itself. I think this is a very bad approach, since is really hard to answer to a True-or-False question without looking at the answer that you know is there. I think they should have putted all the chapter questions and after all the chapter answers.
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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). Then we find the Transportation Layer (Chapter 8) and the Application Layer (Chapter 9). We also find some really interested chapters like Network Devices (Chapter 3), Wireless Networking (Chapter 5), Network Security (Chapter 11) and Network Management (Chapter 12).
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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.
On the exam topic, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.
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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog