For the last few months, I have been working with ISA Server 2006 in our corporate network. Before I got started, I purchased a copy of ISA Server 2006 Unleashed by Michael Noel, published by SAMS Publishing. I was hoping that this book would be a valuable asset in working with ISA Server, particularly since Tom Shinder has not updated his ISA Server 2004 book. This book missed the mark, and badly.
For me, I have a persistent problem with IT industry books. I have this ability, as many people have, to read the directions on the screen. Furthermore, I understand enough of the principles of whatever I am doing to not need a basic primer on every minor detail. Put simply, if I don't understand what I see on the screen, I can look it up. So my needs from a book are to tell me things that I are not on the screen.
This particular book, like many other IT books, is rarely more than a screen-by-screen walk through of ISA Server. And that is disappointing to me. I don't need a book telling me, "on this screen, enter the directory that you wish the application to be installed to." Thanks, but I figured that out when it said, "where do you want the application to be installed?" What I need is a book that contains answers to my questions. Instead of saying, "these are your three choices" I need to know the pros and cons of the choices. When something goes wrong, or not as expected, I need to be able to turn to the book and get an authoritative answer instead of having to spend hours on search engines. And this book simply does not meet my needs.
If you are looking for an introduction to ISA Server 2006, or want to explore its feature set without having to install it, this is a good resource for you. But if you are actually working with ISA Server 2006, and need something more in-depth, you'll want to pass. A much better title for this book would have been ISA Server 2006 Walkthrough.
J.Ja