groupware and communications

I have been working with Exchange since it first released. I started working with Exchange 2000 pretty early into the beta testing process. This is an incredible book and provided tons of new information that I still did not fully grasp despite all of my work in the area.

I can't recommend this book enough. The coverage of routing groups and connectors is fantastic. Instant messaging is one topic covered here that many Exchange 2000 books gloss over. This book is perfect for the person wanting to add depth to their Exchange 2000 knowledge.

Although I found the book to be well written and generally accurate, in times of need it did not supply any answers or ideas for my administration problems. For someone wanting to learn the basics of administering Exchange 2000, this is a good choice. When it comes to the "nitty-gritty" detail, like how to block incoming or outgoing E-Mails for selected users, or configuring an Exchange Server for multiple E-Mail domains, then it falls short of my needs. I would expect an administrator's companion to cover just about everything that can be configured in Exchange 2000 ! This book doesn't supply that need.

I was disappointed that there seemed to be a lot of inaccuracies and incorrect information. Someone in a newsgroup explained to me that many of the statements in this book are incorrect because it was based on Exchange 2000 Beta 3 software and not the final version. The book should state that on the cover, rather than having the reader have to research a topic to verify that it is correct. That is why I bought the book in the first place. This is another disappointing release from Microsoft Press. Is it too much to ask for reasonable accuracy in a technical book? Is it too much to ask that a publisher let people know when a book was written using beta software? I don't think so.

There was some good things about this book, but it is pretty basic overall and some of it seems to be re-hashed material from other Microsoft texts and whitepapers.