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Rating: 
Summary: An inadequate and confusing book.
Review: Aside from poor writing (including some stilted humor) and apparently non-existent editing, this book suffers from some other flaws. Structurally, these include: -Incorrectly and confusingly illustrated figures -Broken link to the web site which supposedly contains errata and corrections, but does not apparently exist -Incorrect page numbers in the index. In addition, the book would have benefitted from a discussion of these items: -A discussion of the notion of "publishing" in the active directory -More information on the trade-offs between native and mixed mode -I would have appreciated references to the Microsoft documentation and white papers that he discusses, but does not include their titles or where to find them -There is no discussion of the hazards of multi-value updates and how to avoid them -No discussion of fault tolerance and backup-restore -- how do you restore an AD node, and how does this affect the other DC's, as well as the GC? Note in particular, if one of the operations masters goes down and can't come back up -- especially important for the RID master. -There should be a bigger discussion of migration, especially the different scenarios, such as in-place, parallel, hybrid, etc. In general, this book suffered from a serious lack of clarity that rendered simple concepts complicated and left complicated concepts completely opaque. In short, I'd say this book does more harm than good.
Rating: 
Summary: Content was helpful for experienced readers
Review: I found this book helpful though I have had a background with the W2K product line since it was released. I decided to forego some of the reviews found here and try the book based on Wiley's excellent background in publishing. While I did find that some of the representations and editing were a bit weak, overall the book was an excellent source information on planning and implementing Active Directory. I would recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Great coverage of the AD topic
Review: I picked this book up last week and started to thumb through it and found myself not able to put it down. The TOC was great and the book followed a good rythm, covering all bases. The planning and implementation sections are terrific, though some of the diagrams were elementary. Overall I found this book to be a very insightful title and would recommend it to all.
Rating:
Summary: This book is awsome
Review: So many of these reviews are talking about pictures. I am glad that I did not buy it based on that. I know fully understand the concepts to deploy this part of Windows 2000. This is an great reference. Buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Good, bad, and silly!
Review: The Good: This book is a good overview for someone who has no real concept of Active Directory (AD). Also, it addresses something often overlooked "Planning" which is usually the downfall of most people ready to blaze a trail and setup AD. The Bad: This book is only good for planning an AD infrastructure and it doesn't tell you a lot of how and why. The Silly: There is a lot of "general IT" common sense stuff in this book that I am not sure is worthwhile for anyone actually in the industry. Also, it goes a bit overboard on the OU structure possibilities.
Rating:
Summary: Good, bad, and silly!
Review: The Good: This book is a good overview for someone who has no real concept of Active Directory (AD). Also, it addresses something often overlooked "Planning" which is usually the downfall of most people ready to blaze a trail and setup AD. The Bad: This book is only good for planning an AD infrastructure and it doesn't tell you a lot of how and why. The Silly: There is a lot of "general IT" common sense stuff in this book that I am not sure is worthwhile for anyone actually in the industry. Also, it goes a bit overboard on the OU structure possibilities.
Rating:
Summary: One Word: "Editor"
Review: There is no excuse for charging money for a book without an editor. There's no consistancy between the text and the diagrams. Additionally, the LDAP section assumes a great deal of background in X.500 as the author spews forth his opinions.
Rating:
Summary: Save paper and remove this book from print
Review: This book is intended for an administrator with modest experience who desires to implement Active Directory Services. It will serve this purpose, but it is poorly executed and filled with errors. I read this book and three others on Active Directory Services in order to plan the implementation of AD for my company. Of the four books, I liked best another by David Iseminger on the same subject. This book, by Schwartz, was by far the least useful of the four. The book is filled with mistakes including many editing oversights. For example, while discussing the differing requirement of intrasite replication versus intersite replication, the book repeatedly uses "intra" where "inter" should have been used. Diagrams that are necessary to illustrate the various architectures possible with Active Directory are poorly drawn and communicate poorly. The book does have a useful glossary and a CD with the complete text in PDF format, which would be handy if the book could in any way be considered an authoritative reference. Given the wide variety of books available, you do not have to put up with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Look past the other reviews...
Review: This book was VERY informative and minus a few errors (the book was written before the release of the product!) I took a lot away from this text. As an NT / W2K administrator I would highly recommend this book!
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