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5 comments about Novell's CNE® Study Guide for NetWare® 5.

1. The nicest thing I can say about this book is that it contains a copy of an NSC Pro CD (and even that is 12 months out of date) however as a study guide it is next to useless. God knows why the author feels that someone wanting to gain a technical accreditation has the time or inclination to wade through all of the puerile filler this book contains. It adds absolutely nothing save to provide a distraction from the content that is the real reason anyone would want to make the purchase. Most of the information is there, but it is like looking for a diamond needle in an odourous haystack, it's too hard to find and you give up looking.

   Save yourself time and frustration and work from the "Exam Cram" series instead, which fly in the face of Clarke convention and actually provide concise, accurate, useful technical information.

   To add insult to injury the much ballyhood "Clarke Tests" are a poor exam preparation, using convoluted and at times irrelevant questions in a clumsy format. If you are after real exam preparation, check out "Exam Essentials" (certify.com)which are infinitely more representative of the real thing.




2. I must say that this is easily one of the worst books I have ever read. It contains jokes, a very stupid story about setting up a Novell Network to save the world, and miles of other garbage that you must shovel out of the way in order to find any facts. The sample test at the end was not only poorly made and unrepresentative of Novell's test, but it also contains many errors, giving you incorrect answers to some questions. Please, take my advice and buy another CNA preparation book.



3. Certification is not easy. I have been using David James Clarke's CNE Study Guide since v3.12. I still use it for reference. This guide is ga great tool, it is well organized, and the puzzles, jokes and quotes help keep your mind moving. (Lets face it, alot of the information you have to memorize is not interesting.) It is presented in the English we use on a daily basis, not in technobabble that you have to decode while you read. With the flood of computer books, none is perfect, but this one is the most complete I've seen. Start with this, but don't expect any single book to make you a CNE or MCSE, it takes more than reading.

   There is no single source of all information. A great deal is opinion and experience. If you can't learn from a book with this much information, you might want to re-examine your study habits. The problem might not be the book.

   Thanks to Mr. Clarke for his help in my success...




4. For those who have read "Novell's CNA Study Guide for NetWare 5", you will be familiar with David Clarke's style. All the necessary material is covered, but extra fluff is inevitable. As with the CNA book, the author uses a fantacy corporation named ACME to illustate his points. The company is made up of heros from earth's past (King Aurther, Abraham Lincoln, etc...) that are the key players for each division/department. Using an example for illustrative purposes makes since, but I think Mr. Clarke goes too far. My advice to Mr. Clarke is keep writing good study guides, but trim out some of the non-sence.

   On the whole the book is very good and I recommend it. You may end up doing more reading than you had planned, but you will learn the material. If you are preparing for CNE exams, experience definitely helps. Do the labs and practice exams.




5. I'm ready to pull my hair out! This book probably has most of the info you'll need, but, as other reviewers have commented, it is buried under a load of garbage. Worse than that, when the author does try to provide information directly, he is often unclear and repetitive. His organization of the subtopics is poor, too. Unfortunately, there are very few third party study guides out there for NetWare 5. Books like this can actually make you learn to not like NetWare itself.

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