certifications

It's a given that no one study guide will give you the understanding to pass the associated MCSE exam, but this barely qualifies as a study guide. For someone who has never worked with Windows before and has never seen XP before, this might be a good "Windows XP for Dummies"-like book. It does quickly gloss over most of the basics of the OS, how to network it and even how to deploy it, but falls short of even being a How-To for people looking to support and not wanting to study for the exam. A good example of just how much information this book lacks is to take the practice exam off the included CD-ROM. Less than five questions into the practice exam, the information needed to get the question right is not even covered in the book.

My suggestion would be to anyone who is looking to prep for the exam is to read the XP Resource Kit, the on-line help, and Microsoft's Readiness Review for XP - and leave this book on the shelf.

This Book is the biggest POS I have ever had for a MCSE book. The cd is such a joke the testing software sucks so bad it does not even test you chapter by chapter. I went and took the 70-270 test and I was not ready for it at all. I went out and bought the sybex 70-270 book and its safe to say I will be so ready for the test now. The software on the sybex book lets you test yourself chapter by chapter and overall the book it set up much better.

This book is far away for being a complete study guide for 70-270 exam preparation. Many questions, that you'll see on the actual exam, do not covered in this book at all. If you are familiar with Win XP, you'll find this book totally useless. If you're newbie to WinXP, you'll see the lack of explanations in many important topics. I'm totally disappointed with Microsoft Press. If you want to pass the exam, choose Sybex.