It wasn’t.

The writers of this book seem to be trying to make the book as long as possible. There are paragraphs dedicated to pointless information that would only be useful to someone who’s never used a computer (at one point, they actually clarify that “IT” stands for “Information Technology”).

While it eventually taught me what I needed, I found myself wasting time reading paragraph after paragraph of fluff, just to get to one useful sentence. I’m reading System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed now, also by Meyler, and it’s the same bloated nonsense.

I highly recommend that you find a different SCCM book to learn from.

I really like it. It covers well all of the aspects of SP1, including some of the newer elements, which a current SMS2003 administrator might have little previous knowledge of, like Native mode, and DCM. And has some really great step-by-step guides for the most-often used reasons for ConfigMgr, like patching and Software Distribution. I especially appreciated the “Real World” and other tips when you are planning or configuring–the gotcha’s that you might not see as obvious, but are obvious once you read their explanation.

As with any technical book, I always learn something new when reading a tech book. For me, I haven’t had a work-related reason (yet) to dive deep into App-v with ConfigMgr, so reading that section gave me a good grounding for when that project comes up (because you know it will eventually).