I want to pursue a career in IT. Due to lack of ‘commercial experience’ I have decided to get an MCP certificate. I have just bought a Server and Server 2003 (Standard) but now I need a certification book. Now before you click reply, let me explain… A couple of years ago I bought a Server 2000 book from Syngress - Osborne Press. This publication consisted of four CD’s and a DVD. I prefer to receive e-book learning on CD’s and DVD’s than on paper. In fact, I don’t like paper at all: firstly because its so goddam heavy, secondly because its not eco-friendly and thirdly because I have an uncommon knack of losing things or getting coffee spilt on them etc. I was looking for an MCSE series and the ones I have looked at so far have been rather boring. I prefer training to be more instructional i.e. lots of exercises. I also prefer a more workbook based course of “Do this – Do that”. It’s not that don’t want the theory, but the book I bought on “Mastering Server 2003” Sybex Press is rather too theoretical with very little practical experience. I also liked the Syngress - Osborne Press series because it was more like this. I looked on Osborne’s website, but unfortunately I could not see the equivalent for Server 2003. Although I have a server and two desktops and a laptop, maybe a “Sim city” ‘Corporate network’ would be nice. Can anyone direct me to a source. I am living in the UK and I prefer to train / teach myself through practical learning. Your help would be most appreciated.

You'll probably find that all of them are theoretical and not practical.

As far as text books go, Mark Minasi (http://www.minasi.com/) has some of the best I've seen. Easy to read and not so stock full of boring technical reading that you start falling asleep after 2 pages. There are many companies that offer CBT bundles (computer based training) which is basically your courses on CD's. Go with whatever works best for you but bear in mind, if you tend to lose things, CD's are a lot easier to lose than a big text book....lol Good Luck!

Take a look at 'CBT nuggets', I have found them by far the best learning material without the heavy going of trying to take it all in from a book. Wizard ICT. Microsoft Certified Professional

Also, for software, google Microsoft Action Pack. $300 gets you all the software you need to get hands on practical experience to help get your certs - Windows 2003, XP, Exchange, SQL, ISA all in there, as well as Virtual PC 2005 to help you build a complete lab network without having a crap load of physical computers. (Also includes Office 2003 and a CRAP LOAD of other stuff). Just have to become a Microsoft Partnet, which is free. :-) "Pat Buchanan, Bob Novak, and G. Gordon Liddy don't like Mark Felt. Mark Felt is truly a great man."