These Guys are THE Authorities on GP
If you're buying a group policy management book, this is the one to buy.. these guys are the real deal when it comes to GP expertise.
Microsoft Group Policy book
Leave it to MS-press to take two well known Group Policy guys, Dereck and Darren and basically make a book that bores you to death. The whole book seems not to have any real "flow." It just rambles from here to there, putting out information which might be useful, if only there were some order to it. If you're looking for a better guide on Group Policies, Jeremy Moskowitz's book, "Group Policy, Profiles and Intellimirror" is a better bet. It's shorter, more consise and has a unified "flow" which can't be beat.
In short, if you're crazy for MS-press books, go ahead and get this one. Else, save your money and go for the title from Moskowitz instead.
Group Policy Bible
At over 700 pages, everything you want to know about Group Policies (GP) is at your fingertips. Covering every aspect of GPs from concept introduction to advanced troubleshooting on all supported Windows platforms (including Windows Server 2003 SP1), any administrator of any level will walk away from this book with a more clear and advanced understanding of the information than what they started with.
Along with foundational GP concepts, everything you need to know about deployment, client hardening, user and computer management, software deployments, and troubleshooting are here. The information does not stop with just configurations for the Windows platform, but covers the Microsoft Office suite as well. Beyond the in-depth administrative information, complete overviews of add-in security templates, creation of custom GP templates, and GPMC scripting are also well documented. The included CD-ROM has every template and tool discussed in the book, as well as many very useful utilities not directly mentioned but of value.
Don't let the size of the book discourage you. Although large, the topics are well presented, well labeled, and what you're looking for is easily found from the table of contents or the index. What makes this book even more usable is the in-page topic links. In every chapter, ever time a concept is presented where you need to understand the foundation, a "More Info" box is presented telling you where in the book to turn for the underlying principals. That little addition makes this book not just a start to finish text, but an as-needed reference that you will keep readily available.
Any administrator of any level that works in any way with Group Policies should pick this up.
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