Anybody else find the 680 book irritating?

Psoasman

I was trying to figure out why some of my answers were "wrong" when they were actually right. I found an errata thread on Amazon, which contains A LOT of errata for a first edition book. I can see how you might mess up some syntax on a complex deployment, but why all the simple typographical errors? Reading this book is almost as irritating as learning to subnet the MS way, Cisco is much easier btw.
ok, done venting, good luck to the other 680 exam takers.

lwhitemcp

i am not finding it fun at all, chapter3, lesson1, ex1 is my latest one, the w: drive contains the file structure for the os, but not the wim , i am wondering if i should point it to the c:\myimages folder instead. at this rate my goal of a chapter a day is quickly becoming stretched to 2 or 3, lol.
in answer to your question, yes i do find it irritating.

cheers

t3ch_guru

I noticed the same thing. Hopefully the actual test isn't too bad.

RobertKaucher

You guys won't find the test very hard at all. In the beta all the deployment questins were conceptual. Knowing which tool was used to do what, etc... Just spend your time on the new features and your eperience should pull you through on the other questions (active directory related, networking, etc).

skrpune

For anyone who's curious, you can get to the Amazon errata thread here.

I think it's great that they have a non-official errata thread going. Obviously, the best thing would be for fewer (or no) errors, but the fact that they have already responded with an errata thread for a book this "young" is great.

t3ch_guru

Thanks.

alokin123

I also find it strange that whenever they refer to a user they always refer to a "her". Here is just one example from the book:

"When a user attempts an act that requires administrative privileges, such as creating a new user account, her rights need to be raised from those of a standard user to those of an administrative user."

veritas_libertas

alokin123 wrote: »

I also find it strange that whenever they refer to a user they always refer to a "her". Here is just one example from the book:

"When a user attempts an act that requires administrative privileges, such as creating a new user account, her rights need to be raised from those of a standard user to those of an administrative user."

It's a Politically Correct thing...

I have nothing against acknowledging both s exes, but I think it has gotten out of line.

t3ch_guru

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it correct to use his/her if they wanted to? Wouldn't that make everyone happy?

veritas_libertas

t3ch_guru wrote: »

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it correct to use his/her if they wanted to? Wouldn't that make everyone happy?

Works for me...

Of course that would have cost them more in ink, paper, etc.

RobertKaucher

t3ch_guru wrote: »

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it correct to use his/her if they wanted to? Wouldn't that make everyone happy?

The current literary trend is to use the feminine pronoun for the indefinite gender. I personally like it. But maybe that's just 'cuz I dig chicks!

We could always resurect the Anglo Saxon version of "it," which was "hit." If people still think it is too similar to the masculine form we could compromise by placing an s infront of it...

Yes, I am an amateur linguist and yes I have the sense of humor of a 10 year old.

lwhitemcp

ok, there is no errata for chap 3 lesson 1, is that because there is nothing wrong with it, or am i doing something incorrect.

becoming tired and frustrated, lol

Hyper-Me

Maybe i need to buy this book and rewrite some of the chapter labs and post em here.

skrpune

alokin123 wrote: »

I also find it strange that whenever they refer to a user they always refer to a "her". Here is just one example from the book:

"When a user attempts an act that requires administrative privileges, such as creating a new user account, her rights need to be raised from those of a standard user to those of an administrative user."

Not to get too off topic, but I always thought it odd that the masculine pronoun is used exclusively in many writings, and to be honest, it usually ticks me off when I see "he/him/his" used all the time. I'm no uber femininist, but I do get cranky when male pronouns are solely used and female ones are skipped over entirely, especially in tech writings - just speaks to old stereotypes about us chicas not being technically oriented.

If this literary trend of using female pronouns is true, I do find it somewhat ironic (and long overdue) that the pendulum has swung in the other direction now. The fellas have had their time, it's now the ladies' turn to rule the pronouns!

Hyper-Me

skrpune wrote: »

Not to get too off topic, but I always thought it odd that the masculine pronoun is used exclusively in many writings, and to be honest, it usually ticks me off when I see "he/him/his" used all the time. I'm no uber femininist, but I do get cranky when male pronouns are solely used and female ones are skipped over entirely, especially in tech writings - just speaks to old stereotypes about us chicas not being technically oriented.

If this literary trend of using female pronouns is true, I do find it somewhat ironic (and long overdue) that the pendulum has swung in the other direction now. The fellas have had their time, it's now the ladies' turn to rule the pronouns!

Not that I think it reflects anything regarding the technical ability of females, but the fact does remain that the ratio of men to women in IT is about 8:1

Psoasman

Ah...Reading this post is like being at work with the other techs, talking about 15 things at once..
Anyways, I gave up trying to play with the images, either my syntax is off by a space somewhere or the book has EVEN MORE errors. Oh well, I think I can figure it out at test time. Usually Orin and Ian are better at this, I thought their 2003 books were better written. My other irritation is all the questions they ask, but no lines to write answers, but that's just me

lwhitemcp

i became so frustrated with the images, i scheduled my security+ for later this month, and cancelled my windows 7 until after a few months of eratta show up, lol

Hyper-Me

There are dozens of places to get the correct syntax (including just running dism /? itself)

Part of being a good systems/desktop admin is knowing how and where to quickly find an answer to a question when you dont already know, so perhaps it would have been good practice

lwhitemcp

perhaps it would have, but it does get frustrating. one does not buy a book in order to research what the errors are in the book.

RobertKaucher

lwhitemcp wrote: »

perhaps it would have, but it does get frustrating. one does not buy a book in order to research what the errors are in the book.

This is true. The big problem is we cannot even point you to the documentation on TechNet because sometimes that seems to have been to root cause of the errors in the book itself!

KGhaleon

Just picked up the 70-680 book early, actually. I suppose I'll begin reading through it soon. Hopefully there aren't too many errors.

Psoasman

Besides the errors in syntax in the book, there are silly ones like: Bob wants to set up offline files, what are the steps she should take? this books feels like they rushed it out to print and then figured they would let the expers here at TE find the errors

GagHalfrunt

It bothers me that I might get questions wrong because I was told the wrong thing in the book.

You get the impression that someone hasn't even read it through for grammar.

I thought that rather than his/her you should use "they". But that's me. "His/her" sounds horribly politically correct. Where can I find this office which is full of women!

finkle636

I agree, how on earth does a major publishing company allow a technical step by step book to go to print without at least 1 person sitting down and actually working through the book?, i don't want no damn erratas or whatever there called, i want a download link to a new ebook .pdf file with the correct information in at least.

skrpune

finkle636 wrote: »

I agree, how on earth does a major publishing company allow a technical step by step book to go to print without at least 1 person sitting down and actually working through the book?, i don't want no damn erratas or whatever there called, i want a download link to a new ebook .pdf file with the correct information in at least.

I've never had a technical book (for certs or CS classes at school) NOT have some sort of errors. A textbook I bought this semester had multiple pages of errata posted online - took me forever to update and make the corrections in the textbook.

In my experience, it's really rare to find any book, technical or not, that has absolutely no errors, and that's with more than one person doing reviews of the book. No one can catch everything, and if the readers report issues they find, the publishers can make those updates/changes in the next printing.

jojopramos

GagHalfrunt wrote: »

It bothers me that I might get questions wrong because I was told the wrong thing in the book.

You get the impression that someone hasn't even read it through for grammar.

I thought that rather than his/her you should use "they". But that's me. "His/her" sounds horribly politically correct. Where can I find this office which is full of women!

Yeah.... I also prefer if they will just use "they".....