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Windows Admin Scripting Little Black Book, Second Edition Review by Jase T. Wolfe
A Good Secondary Addition
This book is a very useful addition, when used in conjunction with, and after a review of, other books on scripting and Windows administration. Throughout the book you will find cut-and-paste scriptlets written in a variety of languages and organized in a relatively easy to find manner. When you aren't looking at scriplets, you will find an abundance of command line syntax references and third-party solutions for very specific issues. As a general administrator, if you know what you want to do, and you don't need a lot of hand-holding or further information, you will probably find it here.
That said, lets discuss the annoyances of this title. First and foremost, a very healthy portion of this book is dedicated to regurgitating the command line syntax (what you get from /? ) from the many utilities referenced (most of which are available from the utilities themselves or the included documentation). The book also includes a lot of command line syntax / usage printouts of 3rd application suites, such as PowerQuest's Drive Image Pro, Symantec's Norton Ghost, LiveUpdate, pcANYWHERE, and Norton AntiVirus, Microsoft Office and WinZip to name a few. It is hard to tell if they were included as a paid endorsement or not, but the author seems to feel that everyone has them, they are your only choice, and does not include a CD-ROM of evaluation software. The book also makes heavy use of non-native scripting languages (KiXtart primarily) as the scripting language of choice to show many of the cut-and-paste solutions; despite it being a foreign command interpreter to the Windows OS and not the industry standard for administrative scripting.
You won't truly learn how to script with this "Admin Scripting" book. You won't learn the in's and out's of the administrative components you are trying to control. You won't be informed about all the ways to accomplish a task if a 3rd party solution is utilized. You will, however, find yourself with a quick reference "idea" book which will come in very handy when you just need the answer to something quickly.