hackneyed writing and frustrating content

"In this chapter, we start getting into the specifics of planning and implementing an ISA Server solution for your network." Chapter one of this book uses the word "solution" thirty-one times, and much of the book's writing uses similarly embarassing IT marketing-speak. This makes perfect sense when you flip through the beginning and end of the book and find adverts for commercial web sites, general knowledge courses, and "corporate network training." Shameless promotions in the form of URLs appear in every chapter and at the bottom of each page! Through the book, you deal with hundreds of brilliant gems like, "An intranet in its simplest form is an internal, private Web" (116). Then, when you need to troubleshoot a problem, you find a scarcity of helpful information. For example, I had a troublesome authentication problem that I though might relate to the autodiscovery on client machines. The book has no useful information on the relationship between authentication and auto vs. manaul proxy settings, even though MS addressed the very issue well before SP1 for ISA. The troubleshooting section on authentication is only one page, and it merely explains the three authentication types and suggests that your most likely problem is not enabling the correct types! I run a small W2K network and have to manage all the major components of W2K, Exchange, and ISA. I've found books by Mark Minasi and Jim McBee to be helpful and even fun to read. This book isn't even close. I've had more success finding help on MS's Technet, and that's a sorry indictment.

Other Reviews

• Very good take on ISA 2000
• The ONLY book to by on ISA Server
• Superb from First to Last!!
• Get this book if you run ISA Server
• hackneyed writing and frustrating content