Title CCA Citrix Certified Administrator Study Guide for Metaframe 1.8 Authors Alan V Keele, Editor Publisher Osborne McGraw Hill Publication Date January 2000 ISBN 0072124393 Price $69.99 (U.S.) Pros Technically complete, with enough information to pass the exam. Cons The editing and organization of the book made it confusing. Verdict If you need to get your CCA now and this is your only study guide, good luck.

Osborne McGraw-Hill released "CCA Citrix Certified Administrator for MetaFrame 1.8 Study Guide" in January 2000, and for almost a year it was the only self-study option available. The good news is that a handful of very experienced and knowledgeable people got together to make this book. When you're reading the material, it shows that they have spent a great deal of time working with Citrix and that we can learn a lot from them. The bad news is the editing of this study guide was less than ideal, with many confusing parts throughout the book. Things like "see below" when the table being referenced is actually on the previous page were confusing. Another example would be the explanation of how high port numbers work; The text walks you though how to set the port to 8000 and the screen shots all show port 6000.

I really liked the idea behind the included CD's test engine. It's Web navigable and doesn't require you to install any software unless you want to track your exam progress. However, I would like to see a complete answer to the questions you miss on the CD exam when you ask for "more details" instead of a shortcut to the page that has the answer on it.

The labs in the book caused problems for me. Labs are supposed to give you the hands-on experience you need for the exam and even help you in the real world. To complete all the labs in this guide you would need to have access to several Citrix servers and clients in all different domain structures. I think it's unrealistic to expect a person to get their hands onto this kind of equipment just to find out the outcome of the experiment. I think having one server and one client was a big help for me, but I had to hypothesize what the outcomes would have been in some of the more advanced labs because I could not perform them.

The biggest challenge in earning my CCA was wading through this book enough to learn what I needed to know to pass the exam. I wish there were more self-study alternatives to this book, but there are few. I would love to see someone write a complete and easy to read study guide for the CCA for those who have yet to get certified. Until then, good luck.

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