general

This book for a certification exam this game is a good ground to start on, but it's designed with the same audience that the exams are designed for, Windows Admin that have at least one year experience.

The first half of the book is a very good reference book, since it goes through many of the screens, step by step, unlike the other AD book that I like, so I would recommend this book and Active Directory Second Edition for any Windows Admins.

Having just taken the 70-291 exam, I can assure you that this is not a full and complete study guide for the real exam. The book is made up of something around 1000 pages, however, for each lesson review, the full questions for each lesson are repeated in the answer section, padding the book's pages quite a bit. Incompleteness in and of itself is not entirely bad, but I found the book to be often misleading and containing several errors. The book is not without its merits, though. The accompanying CD contains a trial version of the Server CD and the labs and exercises were very helpful. The book on CD is also useful to have, especially when you want to study on the go and don't want to drag the book around with you. Call-outs in the text point you to think about what's on the test, too. However, if you're going to take the exam, make sure you don't rely on this book by itself. It's pretty weak on security policies and SUS, both of which are tested on the exam. If you arleady have study guides for this exam, this isn't a bad addition to your library, but it shouldn't be your only book to help you prepare for the exam.

Having experienced the monster exam 70-216 for MCSE 2000 I was very curious whether this W2k3 book lived up to the task. The 70-216 MS Press book was poor to say the least.

I was surprised that not only this book was excellent to read, but it even filled in some things I didn't know before. The hands-on exercises were good as well.

Things like CIDR were discussed in a very clear way which made me think why did I find this difficult before. Likewise the book isn't superficial but goes for in-depth knowledge and insight, just what you also need in real-life.

Simply stated this book has excellent depth and covers nearly all subjects, only some security related things get less attention than on the exam (SUS is emphasized in every exam so it seems). Then again, these should be known from the 70-290 exam and seem to be common knowledge for just about every exam.

What was disappointing however was the exam, of the topics in the book only 1/3 was covered in the questions I got.

This is the type of book MS Press should have made for the 70-216 exam.