Succeeding with Technology: Computer System Concepts for Real Life

The product was good but it was a little being delivered than I am used to.

This book was written to be relevant for students who have grown up with technology. It provides the important IT information that college students will need in their professional life, relevant information on new communications and media technologies, and poignant information on information security, social and global trends and concerns. Tons of examples have been included to reinforce the relevance of the content. Audio study guides for the iPod and high-quality PPT presentations are provided at the author's own Web site.

I am teaching a graduate level survey class on information systems using this as one of two required textbooks. My students range from first year graduate students in Information Science with bachelors in accounting, english, history, philosophy, and psychology to those near the end of their masters studies with bachelors in computer science or information science, so finding a survey-type text that might be useful and interesting to all was a challenge. So far, so good. The less savvy students say that the text is not too technical and the more savvy students say it provides a good reminder of concepts they already knew and filled in a few that they didn't know. I chose this text over Stairs' "Principles of Information Systems' because I felt the latter covered the same scope but with more cases, concepts, and depth than I could effectively cover in a one semester class. Instead of business cases, this text introduces a scenario that the students are likely to encounter at the beginning of each chapter, teaches concepts and skills they need to know to address the scenario, and then includes an "Action Plan" at the end that describes a methodology for solving it. Throughout the text, there are many boxes describing real world situations or novel ways the technology under consideration has been used. This text is also about half the price of "Principles...". In the Instructors edition, I like the summary spreadsheet at the end of each chapter that relates learning objectives to specific concepts to questions to excercises. I like the way the "2005 Update" edition is formatted. The basic chapters appear to be the same (I didn't compare word for word though) but at the end of each chapter, there is a "What's New" section that seems to cover up to approximately May 2005. In this way, instructors should not have to do much translation from newer to older editions of the texts. There are already prepared Powerpoint presentations for each chapter that come on a CD with the Instructors' edition. They have been very helpful in providing starting point for identifying key concepts from the chapters and then adapting or adding my own slides to them. Overall I think this is a very good textbook for a survey course in information systems and technology for not only undergraduates but also graduate students who do not have a computer science background. Roger D. Gifford, Adjunct Lecturer University at Albany