Others say...

"Decent SharePoint 2007 User's Guide"
SharePoint 2007 User's Guide definitely touches on the many topics necessary for the end users to learn the MOSS productivity platform.
Overall, the book is very informative. My only complaint is the style that it is written doesn't include any examples/exercises for the user to follow. There are definitely how-tos in this book, however, there are more examples for what can be done and not how to do it especially in the waning chapters of the book. There is very little useful hands on in the chapters regarding Document Management and Collaboration.
Regardless, it is still a good short reading and if you are new to SharePoint you will get much out of it.
If you are interested in a more robust read try Beginning SharePoint 2007 from Wrox. A book on the same topic with much more useful content.

"Valuable reference guide to make the most out of SharePoint functionality"
We have learned our lesson that the more we customize in SharePoint 2003, the harder it is to upgrade to SharePoint 2007. Going forward, we want to leverage more of the out-of-the-box functionality and stay away customizations. This is a great reference book for making the most out of SharePoint. If you know the functionality you want in team-collaboration sites (e.g. project team site, deal site, product site) or information-sharing sites (e.g. research & publication site, HR & benefits site), it is a valuable resource to understand various building blocks and know which tool to use.

I do not recommend this book for developers, but found to be useful for power-users, business analysts, functional analysts, content managers, MsOffice specialists or anyone else who wants to learn what you can do with SharePoint.

"A bit of a disapointment"
For a technology book, it's well below par.

The majority of the content in this book is just a repackaging of the help available in SharePoint; and much of that is pretty well obvious. I knew zero (nothing) about SharePoint before getting this book. I found that the organization and presentation of information in the book didn't parallel any sandbox/tutorial workflow, nor did it approach topics from any broader "good design" perspective. To date, well more than 90% of my SharePoint answers have come from the web, not this book.

The chapter on "list concepts" was helpful, and probably saved me some time and effort. For that alone it was worth the $26. But overall, I was hoping for a better book based on the early reviews I read (Note: only the April-07 reviews were here when I bought the book).



"Our end-users love this book!!"
I am a network engineer working for a renowned pharmaceutical company. We implemented SharePoint 2007 back in January. Training our end-users was a real challenge until I got a hold of this manual. I consider the SharePoint 2007 User's Guide as a great supplement to end-user training. A excellent end user reference book that is well written and easy to follow. Our older SharePoint 2003 users that want or need to brush up their skills see real value in this book. You will not be the least bit disappointed with this buy. I highly recommend it.

"User's Guide great for its intended audience"
For any orgnaization that is implementing SharePoint for end-user use, this book is an extremely valuable. The documentation on Microsoft's website and within the help links within the Sharepoint portal are nearly unusable for an end-user, and definitely cannot be used as an initial learning guide. This book takes up the slack. If you have "power" end-users in your organization who will be using the out-of-the-box features of Sharepoint to customize their portals, this book is for them. It can also be used as a reference for learning how to implement features and navigate through the various setup menus.

S. Taylor (stusrt) - This is not a technical reference - it is for end users - "SharePoint 2007 User's Guide". While this book touches on how to programatically customize Sharepoint, it is not the main purpose. Once you have programmed your portal, and now need to release it to end users, give THEM this book. You'll be happy about how few questions you will get back about using Sharepoint, since they will be well informed.