Customer Reviews
Important stuff missing - By: freebo, 03 Jun 2008 
I think the exam must have been updated since this book last was as there's key topics missing from the book. The books also pretty long winded & only includes a practise exam for part one. The practise questions are also much easier than the real exam ones.
To me it tries to be both a study guide for the 2 exams & an introduction to Solaris & hence fails on both counts.
Passed the Exams! - By: , 22 Mar 2006 
This is a rock solid book. I have passed both the exams after preparing from this book & from the practice exams that come with this book. I found this book self contained & very focussed on the exam objectives. Yet there is a perfect flow throughout the book. All concepts are clearly explained. This makes this book especiallly suitable for the beginners.I do not agree with the criticism that this book does not cover the Soalris 10 features well. The Solaris 10 features are covered adequately throughout the book where they are required by the exam objectives & by the flow of the presentation. The fact that most of the messages critical of this book have the same tone & they promote the competitor book, makes me wonder if this is just a PROPAGANDA for the other book. I don't care if the other book is good or bad. This book has helped me & I believe this is an excelent book, so I recommend it to everyone: the people who want to prepare for the SCSA exams & the people who just want to learn the basics of Solaris 10.
The Errata for the book is already avaliable. You can download it by clicking on a link in the Amazon Connect feature on the Product Description page for this book on amazon.com
Passed the Exams! - By: Vin, 22 Mar 2006 This is a rock solid book. I passed both the exams after preparing from this book, & also preparing from the practice exams that come with this book. The Errata for the book is already available. There is a link in the Amazon Connect feature in the Product Description page for this book on Amazon.com, that you can click on to download the Errata.
I found this book focussed on the exam objectives & still there is a perfect flow in the presentation. It is a self contained to-the-point book: alll the concepts are clearly defined. Perfect for a beginner as well. I do not agree with the criticism that Solaris 10 features are not covered. They are covered alll through the book as the exam objectives require.
Most of the criticism of this book on this page has the same tone & message & promotes the competitor book. That makes me think that it is just a Propaganda for the other book (possibly by one person). I don't care if other book is good or bad; but I do beleive from my experience that this book is excellent & I recommend it to alll: people who want to take the exam & also people who just want to learn the basics of Soalris 10 System Administration.
Don't base your study solely on this book!! - By: , 13 Mar 2006 
Its worth noting that the positive reviews of this book are from people who have yet to sit the exam. I did my study for 310-200 based on this book & I too was very pleased with it & felt very confident.
I started to feel uneasy when I read davidkirkby's review which questioned whether the book went into enough depth. As a result I went off & did alot of independant study. This saved me in the exam.
This book gives you a false sense of security. As davidkirkby says, Bill Calkins book goes into alot more depth & seems much closer to what the exam requires.
To give three examples, the subjects of SMF, printer administration & x86 booting were not covered in enough depth. I could quote three or four commands which came up in my exam & are not mentioned anyware in the book
You can pass the exam just using this book, but only just. - By: , 13 Mar 2006 I have sat the first exam this book covers (cx-310-200) & I was not impressed by how much material this book had either missed or skipped over quickly. In particular this book has very little on the new Solaris 10 features such as SMF (svcs, svcadm etc), which is a problem as this is a pretty radical change from the standard init/run level unix system. The exam question on this topic in particular were much more detailed than the book material.
It also has an annoying habit of hiding import information in the middle of paragraphs of text (e.g. file locations) making quick review difficult.
The book also suffers from poor editing; it appears as though a non-technical editor was the last person to proof read the book as there are passages that have obviously incorrect syntax (e.g. missing |'s before grep).
On the plus side, the book covers the material that is included with out too much waffle & comes with a reasonable practise exam that is very similar to the real thing (although a little easier).
In short, this book reads like a Solaris 9 book that needs alot more updating for Solaris 10. And proper editing.
