MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-297): Designing a Microsoft® Windows Server(TM) 2003 Active Directory® and Network Infrastructure

I used this book to study for the 70-297 exam, like I did my other 6 MCSE exams and found this book to be the poorest of the MCSE collection. The book was too general and definitely did not prepare me well enough to pass the exam (I passed the other 6 exams first-time). I would recommend passing on this book and find something else to study from that includes an exam simlulation, as the exam format is very different from other exams.

I've done an semi instructer led classroom training, where I recieved the Microsoft official Course book (MOC) aswell. I used this book to lookup the subjects that weren't covered in the MOC book.
Also after the training with the MOC was finished I used this book to read up about the subjects I failed in the test exams, because this book has a different way of explaning things.
I had to do the exam twice because without being in an enterprise it is hard to relate to the subjects.

The book was not extremely useful for this exam, basically its just a recap of the materials learnt in all other exams. The book did however provide a great refresh of this information and the practice questions on the simulator included prepare you for the exam well.

Overall this book was a great review and summary of some of the information covered on the 70-297 vendor exam. However, it was missing some specific details about material that was covered on the vendor exam. The case studies did a great job of preparing you for the type of format you will see on the exam but the content was not nearly as in-depth or challenging as on the vendor exam. IF you are looking for the quintessential book to prepare for the vendor exam, this is not it. However, as a review of major concepts it is right on.

This MS Press book does a poor job in preparing the reader for exam 70-297. Not to say it doesn't include useful information, but it doesn't focus on the same information the exam appears to consider useful. For example, I'd estimate the real exam has 20% of its questions directly related to domain upgrade/migration procedures. This book's material on the same: 2 pages.

I do appreciate other MS Press books. ISBN 0735618992 (Exchange 2003, 70-284), and ISBN 0735615772 (AD for 2003 Technical Reference) are both great. By the way, I used the latter to fill in for some of the shortcomings of this book.