BKWNSAPC.RVW   990820

"Windows NT Server 4.0 Administrator's Pocket Consultant", William R.
Stanek, 1999, 0-7356-0574-2, U$29.99/C$44.99/UK#27.49
%A   William R. Stanek nt-consulting@tvpress.com
%C   1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA   98052-6399
%D   1999
%G   0-7356-0574-2
%I   Microsoft Press
%O   U$29.99/C$44.99/UK#27.49 http://www.microsoft.com/mspress
%P   329 p.
%T   "Windows NT Server 4.0 Administrator's Pocket Consultant"

I suppose that one might say that this book is a "consultant" in that
one might "consult" it about which button to press on a particular
screen.  However, I would imagine that most people would have a
slightly fuller expectation of the word "consultant," as in someone
who is able to help you with something you don't already know how to
do.

Part one supposedly deals with administration fundamentals.  Chapter
one indicates the way the book means to progress by talking about tool
trivia rather than basic concepts.  The dialogue boxes for Server
Manager are reviewed in chapter two, but not in significant detail. 
As only one example, the reader is purportedly told about how to set
up alerts, with passing mention of the fact that the Alerter and
Messenger service are required for this function.  The reference given
does not actually tell you anything about these services, and, in
fact, neither does the rest of the book.  Task Manager and Event
Viewer screens are described in chapter three.

Part two looks at user administration.  Chapter four lists, but does
not explain, Microsoft terminology and some of the default accounts. 
Some of the options for user or group creation are outlined in chapter
five.  Chapter six talks about the functions in User Manager.

Disk management is the topic of part three.  Chapter seven looks at
Disk Administrator and some other utilities.  There is a reasonable
overview of volumes and RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)
arrays in chapter eight.  There is some discussion of file systems in
chapter nine, but most of the space is devoted to Windows Explorer. 
The assigning of share permissions is described in chapter ten. 
Rather ironically, chapter eleven reviews a number of backup media
types, but then only outlines the use of NTbackup, which is restricted
to tape drives.

Part four addresses network administration.  Chapter twelve lists,
piecemeal, various screens and dialogues to do with TCP/IP
configuration.  Print servers are discussed in chapter thirteen.  DHCP
(Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) settings are viewed in chapter
fourteen, without, of course, any indication of how to get a range of
IP addresses in the first place.  Chapter fifteen runs through the
screens for the WINS (Windows Internet Name Service) and only then
does sixteen explain what DNS (Domain Name Service) is.

This book basically reproduces, with about the same level of detail,
the Windows help system.  At best it is a not-quite-complete desk
reference to the administrative utilities in NT.  Forget consulting.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999   BKWNSAPC.RVW   990820