The Windows Command Line Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

This book has been a big big help with taking the Google-Coursera IT course! While it may be a few years old, ALL the commands are current! I like the way the Commands are written in very readable print, not teeny tiny like some books! The book is very simple yet explicitly written. The commands are organized into well thought out chapters. The first chapter explains how to access the command line several different ways and how to add administrator privileges if needed and why you would use the commands. He also explains all the flags you commonly might add to the commands and why and how to access help features and how to check to see if commands worked! This Author knows his stuff! If you are taking IT courses, want to brush up on IT skills, or want to learn more about what goes on in the Window's background, I highly recommend this book! Excellent! His Ubuntu/Linux command line book is just as well written!

Even with the plethora of online resources available for learning about the command prompt, the chance you will happen upon misinformation, inept or sparse explanations is a constant challenge. Jonathan Moeller, author of The Windows Command Line Beginner’s Guide, has taken time to research, experiment, contemplate and then write about certain useful commands in a way that is often lacking when simply surfing the web for answers. Perhaps it is the authors experience as a writer first and technologist second that makes this book far more readable than one might expect on a topic such as the command prompt. Moeller takes a fairly elementary approach suitable for beginners or those, such as myself, looking for a refresher and to help fill gaps in ones knowledge of the command prompt. The book covers all the basics from querying file directory information to more specific administrative tasks such as creating or deleting user accounts. The book is easy to follow; allowing the reader to test the various commands and their options before moving onto the next section. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Moeller also included an interesting bit about the history of the command prompt and Windows that helps to introduce the topic before delving into the details. As someone interested in data analytics, I was hoping to discover any ability the command prompt has in dealing with data integration tasks. This the book did not do, but it did provide a foundation in which every reader can take, apply to their own situation and then branch out into their respective areas of interest. My only criticisms are that the author fails to distinguish between command and cmd which is a fairly important first step for beginners. Also the inclusion of certain commands such as DISKPART might be considered questionable due to their potential danger especially for the unscrupulous beginner. I did happen upon one error in regards to the command COLOR which I would consider fairly easy to spot and wonder how the editor managed miss it. Regardless, I already e-mailed the author and I expect this will be fixed in subsequent versions. All in all, this book is a good starting point that covers most of the basics. You can't loose with this title especially at the current Kindle price of $0.99!

I rarely write reviews. However, I felt that the current reviews don't give this book justice. It is for absolute beginners that are clueless on many command line issues. It goes into basic details on many topics, it is an easy read, and it is incredibly cheap ($0.99 at the time of my purchase). It also provides a brief history of the topics that the book discusses in order to give the reader a better understanding of how some of the Windows conventions have come to be. Overall, this book has helped me very much on my journey to become a proficient programmer.

Likes: The material is easy to follow, with clear explanations and examples. It also introduces some basic networking commands, which can be useful for beginners getting familiar with the command line. Dislikes: The content feels a bit too short and only covers very basic concepts. If you already have experience with DOS or Command Prompt commands, much of this will seem repetitive. If you know DOS commands, this basically applies to Command Prompt.

It is what the Title says, a GOOD Book to Learn the Ropes on using the Command Prompt to perform MANY tasks in Windows. Definitely worth the cost. Only buy though if you plan on using the Command Prompt App to do tasks, if you've been using Windows for awhile and haven't come across anything you needed the command Prompt for, than you probably don't have a need for this book. But there are things that you have to use the Command Prompt for and this book is A Great Tool to get you pointed in that/and the Right Direction. The writer explains things pretty understandable.

Definitely more than $0.99 worth of usefulness in here (at time of review, cost is 99 cents) I went through this book in about two weeks on my Kindle. I'm sure others can go through it quicker, but I was practicing with most of the commands mentioned in the book as I read about them. It's a good read; I like the author's conversational style of writing. Also, he sometimes provides a little history here and there about Windows/DOS and PCs in general, some of which was interesting, and if that's not your thing, there's not so much of it to bore you. I got a pretty good feel for what can be done from standard Windows commands and also increased my familiarity with not only the commands themselves, but the available switching options. Some parts could have used a little more explanation. For example, in the chapter on networking, he provides a secondary way of obtaining your IP address using netsh (net shell) but this is practically the only mention of netsh in the book and he treats it like a command, when in fact, netsh is a command-line utility with a whole slew of other capabilities. Sure, the full power of netsh would be beyond the scope of the book, but he could have taken a paragraph, or heck, even a footnote to explain that. On the other hand, he dedicates an entire chapter to disk partitioning, (the diskpart utility), and while it's good to know that that exists, if I were seriously planning on doing ANY sort of disk partitioning, there's NO WAY I would rely on the equivalent of 10 or so e-book pages to walk me through. While he is pretty good in every chapter about giving necessary cautions of what the reader needs to be careful with, the diskpart utility in particular is in a whole other category of its own, basically it gets a "DO NOT TOUCH WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION" label in my mind. So I kinda glossed through that chapter to see that, yes, diskpart exists, but I don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole until I'm well-read (in more substantial books) and have backed up everything on my hard-drive. Opposed to one of the negative reviews, I don't consider this book a no-brainer for absolute-zero beginners. I think most people, even computer savvy folks, will learn a few things here. The ideal audience in my opinion would be someone who's comfortable with general use of a computer, has maybe opened the command prompt once or twice, and perhaps even executed a couple of commands, but maybe didn't really know what he/she was doing, and wants to learn more. This book will give you a gateway into the "more" you're looking for, but for any serious command line dabbling, I recommend supplementing the book with other sources, many of which are freely available online. ESPECIALLY supplement if you're dabbling with anything that includes the /delete option or, *shudders* diskpart. One minor complaint: I wish the author had taken more time to explain how unforgiving the command prompt is when it comes to spaces. This can especially be a headache if you try messing with batch files (which are only briefly covered in the book anyhow) but it applies everywhere. Most computer programming languages are pretty lenient about spaces. Not DOS commands. If you follow the format exactly as in the book, I'm sure you'll be ok, but if you're doing some free-form typing, be sure to mind your spacing. It's a very subtle mistake that can cause the command prompt to choke with strange error messages when you're off by a space. This really should have been more explicitly pointed out. Still, you're virtually guaranteed to get your 99 cents worth. Oh, and I just remembered, %20 of the book (which is to say probably about 20 pages) are dedicated to the author's fan fiction work, included here as a bonus. I didn't personally read that part, because I'm not typically into fiction in general. It didn't bother me that he included it either. (Can't blame a guy for promoting his work, whatever the medium) The book, sans the fan fiction, had everything I would expect a beginner's command line book to include. The rest is fluff. If you happen to have a liking for fantasy/fiction as well, then you get an added bonus. If you don't, don't read it. To me, DOS-style command line interfacing and fantasy make for strange bedfellows, but to each their own.

The Windows Command Line Beginner's Guide provided me with a much-needed refresher in using the command line. I'd been away from using the command line for some time and this book provided what I needed. I'm not an expert by any means, but this book has moved back beyond the beginner stage. Thank you for a helpful refresher and a valuable reference.

I use the command line so rarely that I almost always need to get the answer to a beginner's question. When this book lacked enough depth it gave enough info to jog my memory or point to a more advanced resource. On Kindle the menu item "View Popular Highlights" is a quick way to browse whats and how-to's

Il libro è scritto in maniera semplice e chiara ed è corredato di un sacco di esempi. Sicuramente consigliabile a chi vuole approfondire il tema della linea di comando di windows

Lo estoy disfrutando mucho.

日本語訳では、理解出来ない・判りにくいことも、やさしく記述されています。Second Editionで、内容を見直している余裕もお勧めの内容になっています。この延長で、Unix for Macとか、PowerShellの初心者向けのガイドブックがあると良いのですが、探してもなく、この著者の本が出ると良いと思います。

An affordable and informative guide of what I have read of this e-book so far.

Ok, so I’m giving 5 stars because it was only priced at 99p. You pay for basic and you get what you pay for. THE GOOD. It explains dos quite well and gives a good grounding in the basics, makes a nice reference book, and that is what I was looking for. I was looking for info on how to write bat files, it is included but only glosses over the subject, a little more detail would have been nice. For a book like this, stick to the basics. THE BAD. A little too much trying to cover systems administration. If you’re a network administrator, you wouldn’t be picking up a 99p short story on the subject, you would be looking at more weighty tomes. There are things covered that could potentially brick your computer. And although caution is advised, in my opinion it is too heavy a subject for a beginners book.