Book guide and evaluation
Ubuntu Unleashed 2010 Edition: Covering 9.10 and 10.4 (5th Edition)
Andrew Hudson,Paul Hudson,Matthew Helmke,Ryan Troy
English
Intermediate
Network
4.3 / 5
0 reviews
2009
Published
863
pages
350
views
This book says "Covering 9.10 and 10.4" (sic) on the front cover, back cover, title page and copyright page. Only when you read the last sentence of a paragraph in the introduction 17 pages into the book do you see "This book covers Ubuntu version 9.10". And then, on all 826 pa
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What will you get from this book?
This book says "Covering 9.10 and 10.4" (sic) on the front cover, back cover, title page and copyright page. Only when you read the last sentence of a paragraph in the introduction 17 pages into the book do you see "This book covers Ubuntu version 9.10". And then, on all 826 pages, there is not a single mention of Ubuntu 10! Not one. Not until you get to inside back cover, where they try to get you on their mailing list by offering a DVD by mail. I don't see how they could get away with selling this book in stores, but when buying on Amazon it's hard to catch stuff like this even when you can preview portions online.
The book doesn't stand up well as a 9.10 intro either. The publisher has reused old pre-9 screenshots and old pre-9 content, and chapter sections written by four different authors are just slapped together in a way that often makes for very choppy reading. I would be embarrassed to be associated with this book as author or editor, and the packaging of this product makes me embarrassed for the entire marketing profession! The authors all seem perfectly competent and I hate to injure their royalties with this review but this book is a scam and I bet they had very little to do with this edition.
On the very last page they offer you a replacement disc - A disc! In this century! - for an upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 and other software all of which can be downloaded elsewhere for free, along with a PDF document on what's new in 10.04 WHEN AVAILABLE. As far as I can tell it's June 2010 and that PDF is still not available, but maybe that's just because they haven't replied to my customer service request. The autoreply says they got my message THREE WEEKS AGO. This whole DVD by mail idea is just a trick to get people on their mailing list, and I'm not going to bite. They send the PDF electronically to people outside the USA, so I contacted the publisher (InformIT / Pearson Education / SAMS) asking for the PDF only because I don't want the DVD, and they didn't even have the courtesy to reply to me!
Not worth your time, untrustworthy publisher, low-quality book. This one is going back to Amazon.
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