Network Administrator: NetWare 4.1

This textbook places the student in the role of a systems administrator and treats the learner as a competant computer user from the first chapter. The students like this approach. Included projects build from one chapter/topic to another. However, some of the practical exercises are a little too vague for the beginner. Projects seem to jump around from using a step-by-step approach to using an overview approach, even within the same project and without warning. Order of presentation of topic is genterally good but, Chapters 4 and 7 deal with the NDS. Chapters 5 and 8 deal mainly with the file system. This alternating of topics can be very confusing for the learner. Having taught one 14 week term with this text, I would recommend dealing with the NDS, then with the file system instead of jumping around like this. I am currently teaching from this text for the second time. Also, this book should only be adopted if the class will have exclusive use of atleast one Novell server because all exercises assume that the instructor setup disk has been used. It sets up the teaching server with the assumption that only one group uses the server simultaneously and exclusively. The author prepared the exercises for his own classes and they worked well for him. I, however, must share the teaching server with 4 other classes. In order to provide my students with precise step-by-step instructions geared towards our college teaching server, I had to create my own labs. It was the students who requested more detailed lab instructions. Overall this would be a great book, 5 stars if it were more consistent in project instructions and better organized in chapter sequences. C. Booth-Smith, Durham College