Free Windows Server 2008 R2 eBook

Well if this isn't the week for free books... Now there is a free eBook download from Microsoft: Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2.

The "Introducing" series of MS Press books are hardly a technical treatise on whatever subject they happen to cover, but in my opinion, free information regarding their latest products is always a good thing.

And thanks again goes to Bink.nu for this post.

Two More Free MS Press eBooks

MS Press is celebrating it's 25th anniversary by giving away free stuff.

The books are Windows SBS 2008 Admin's Companion and Visual Basic 2008 Express.

Follow the links at the MS Press blog site. (You have until April 22nd.)

As noted on the blog... the first MS Press book was in 1984, for Mac :)

Free PowerShell eBook

Thanks to the Canadian IT Pro blog for this one.

Keith Hill is giving away a free eBook for PowerShell in PDF format. I've only begun to read it and I like what I see. Get it now at the best price around.

As an added bonus, check out Keith's Blog, it has a lot of scripting tidbits as well.

Mark Minasi's News

It there's one tech author I enjoy reading it's Mark Minasi, he has a way of turning dry, stale tech books into something worth reading. Anyway, I digress...

If you head over to his site, you can sign up for his free newsletter. It's not as regular as it could be, but life isn't always on a schedule. All the issues have useful content and there is a full archive. The latest news has a great list showing the benefits of Windows 2008. It is definitely worth subscribing.

Windows Server 2008 Inside Out

As I've mentioned in the past, I'm currently working on an Exchange 2007 roll-out and it's on Windows 2008 servers.

During this endeavor, I've been using the Windows Server 2008 Inside Out book as a reference guide and I must say it is quite good. William Stanek is a good author and the book delves into many real work scenarios and holds a lot of good IT on-the-job kind of advice. And at almost 1500 pages, thankfully it's an MS Press book, which means it comes with a searchable PDF eBook version.

The book is written for the Intermediate/Advanced reader which is something to keep in mind. I definately recommend it.

Mastering Windows Vista

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm studying for the 70-620 Configuring Vista certification exam. As part of this process, I've read 85% of Mark Minasi's book, Mastering Windows Vista Business. The book starts rather low tech, moves toward more work related topics and higher level information as the it progresses. It covers a lot of information, and at 1020 pages it should. I don't know if this was the best resource for studying for the Vista exam, but it was on my shelf waiting to be read. As I mentioned I only cleared 85% of the book, which is 867 pages, because the last section covers automated corporate deployment options with images, etc., which is not covered in the 70-620 exam; I was getting short on time and CBT CD to watch. All-in-all another good book by Mark Minasi, his easy style and readability makes all of his books great resources.

I've also watched 15+ hours of video using a CBT Nuggets product with James Conrad. This was quite the undertaking (3 hours the first day, then two 6 hour days), most of the content I was familiar with, but there were a few gems I may need for the exam or work in general. James is quite chatty, cracks himself up and sometimes makes some amusing metaphors and examples, one was (I'm paraphrasing), "Imagine having a three year old that just ate a box of Twinkies." I give this product a mild recommendation, as it was interesting most of the time and the presentation was definitely workable.

Additionally I've read free guides from ProProfs and took a couple of sample tests from MeasureUp. Both of which were worthwhile.

Now with all this time in, I'm feeling pretty good about passing the test, I'll know tomorrow afternoon for sure...