Introduction to Windows Vista

This book provides pretty thorough coverage of the features in a good overview of what matters. It is the only one so far that states “Based on Beta” right on the cover. Though they have all clearly been based on the beta and release candidate distributions of Vista, I appreciate this being called out. I have not come across anything that is incorrect thus far (though I’m sure there are some facts now inaccurate). In fact, the book makes the effort to remind you in areas of the book that are deemed more likely to have changed in the final release. In the other books, I have seen inaccuracies, but without providing disclaimers as this book does, I find myself far less tolerant.

The book does a pretty good job of touching on all the major changes. It is not what I would consider “highly detailed” but it does provide enough for you to understand what has changed and to spark you interest in pursuing those items you may want to learn more about.

My take so far: Pretty Happy

Uncovering Windows Vista

This was the second book I found that did was not talking to a home user audience and I’ve been happiest with it among those I’ve spent time reading so far. It talks to those that know XP and makes regular comparisons to how things have changed—a welcome way to present the latest version of something with which the reader is already (at least somewhat) familiar.

My take so far: Very Happy

Windows Vista Admin Pocket Consultant

This seems right up my alley—it is certainly a book for admins so I picked it up. I was a bit disappointed to find less “Admin” content that I had hoped. It does not provide any more detail than the previously mentioned books.

In looking for more information to share about the new Event Viewer capabilities, I found nothing. There is very little mention of the Event Viewer at all and uncovering a screen shot, it seems the book was written before the new Event Viewer was included. It does contain some good information and makes a decent reference, suffering a bit from a lack of detail.

My take so far: Relatively happy.

Administering Windows Vista Security

I just picked this one up several days ago, and so it started out as a bit frustrating of a read. It is the style of the book to talk to you in a narrative which can be at times very light on helpful content. It is a better read for it, but not as good as a reference. I look through these books for good topics to cover here at realtime-vista.com and I found two that did not pan out before putting the book aside in frustration:

First it talked about how file and registry writes are transactional and how you can set a transaction point at the command line, make changes and then affect a rollback. Very interesting and I was all set to share it with you in detail until I got to the end of the step-by-step instructions only to read a “warning” that the feature did not make it to RC2.

Skimming for something of interest, I came across a section discussing how Windows Vista would not prompt for unsigned drivers on 32-bit systems. Wow, that doesn’t sound right does it? Well it is not true. I’ll post my findings on this topic in another blog post, but suffice to say the book was not right about this and I’m not sure yet what else it is wrong about.

These first two bad experiences aside, I’ve been happier the more I read with the coverage of admin features, but I do feel the need to validate everything I read with my own testing much more than normal. Instead of telling someone something as fact, I’ll say “you know what I read? . I’ll let you know more when I work with it myself.”

My take so far: Not unhappy

If you are more interested in one of these books than the others, post your comment here and I’ll prioritize getting a more through review of the one(s) you are interested in hearing about first!